Conflict In High Resolution

Two conflicts lie at the heart of “Dateline Israel,” a compelling, but uneven exhibition of new photography and video art at the Jewish Museum. The first, which you might call Israel’s internal, existential crisis, concerns the tension between the past and the present. The second, Israel’s external, political crisis, relates to the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. These are both major issues in the Jewish state, so it is hardly remarkable to see artists take them on. What is surprising, however, is that so much of the show’s strongest, most memorable work seems limited to the first category.Take, for example, Barry Frydlen der’s “The Blessing” (2005) and Pavel Wolberg’s “Qalqilya (Out skirts)” (2002). On the face of it both photographs explode stereo types. In the former, ultra-Orthodox men gathered at an outdoor picnic talk on cell phones and show themselves to be thoroughly modern. In the latter, a young Palestinian Arab woman wearing a head scarf looks coquettishly at a machine gun–toting Israeli soldier, who turns bashfully away. Both images can be viewed as complicating our understanding of Israel, showing that men who wear black robes that went out of fashion centuries ago are hip to cellphone culture and that Israelis and Palestinians flirt as well as fight.The problem here is that such “complexities” are so well documented and well known that they have become a new sort of cliché. Israel is nothing if not complex. Mr. Frydlender’s work emerges as the far stronger of the two, because the modern and pre-modern incongruities of ultra-Orthodox life are but one of the many themes of his nuanced image (itself a Photoshop composite of many related exposures) — some others being issues of time and perspective, as well as the truthfulness of photographic images in general. Mr. Wolberg’s photograph, on the other hand, is about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Like so many of the other photojournalists in the exhibition, his work aims to put a human face on the horrible conflict. And so we are shown that Israeli settlers have quiet moments of domestic tranquility; that Palestinian Arabs can be very Western; that a badly maimed soldier can feel blessed despite horrific wounds — facts that all but the most ignorant or ideological observers of the situation already know.I do not mean to pick on Mr. Wolberg. He is a talented photographer, and the images by him and other photographers whose work I am grouping with his can be moving, humorous, charming, and exceptionally powerful. But too often they seem motivated by good intentions — by politics, in other words — rather than genuine aesthetic concerns.By contrast, the best works in this exhibition do not try to impress upon viewers a particular view of Israel or human nature. They do not assert meaning; they create it.Like Mr. Frydlender’s piece, Leora Laor’s nine-photograph installation focuses on haredi culture, but her images play off one another to suggest an ultimate concern with that community’s elusiveness. Her subjects are typically seen from behind; they hurry away, avoiding the camera. Something much more than simple documentation is at stake: the morality and limitations of photographic representation.The German artist Wolfgang Tillmans’s striking “Aufsicht (yellow)” (1999) presents a wide-angle cityscape of Tel Aviv, as seen from a raised elevation and through a manipulated, strong yellow light. The picture’s unusual tone creates a distancing, slightly alienating effect, an impression that is heightened by the evocation of passing time — the yellow suggests an aging photograph. But there is also a more ominous reading of the image’s tint, as it alludes to the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi era.When the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is most successfully addressed in this show, it is subsumed into the larger narrative of Israeli identity. The Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra is known for exploring the anxieties and complexities of adolescence in seemingly straightforward portraits. Here she presents a diptych of two images of a young woman named Abigail, taken a year and a half apart. The photos chart the subject’s passage from carefree, easygoing teenager to reserved, somewhat uneasy young adult — a movement given particular urgency by her wardrobe change: In the first image Abigail wears a black tank top; in the second, green Israeli army fatigues.Another particularly strong work is Yael Bartana’s “Trembling Time” (2001), a six-minute, slow-motion video-and-sound installation that depicts a stretch of Tel Aviv highway at the moment during Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, when a siren sounds throughout the nation and Israelis stop their activities to commemorate fallen soldiers. The video begins with traffic passing slowly. Then the siren wails and the cars come to a halt. People open their doors and step onto the concrete highway. Due to the editing and slow-motion effect, a memory of previous images lingers over the present one, and the moving cars and people opening and closing doors overlap.This haunting merger of past and present evokes the work’s central theme: the communion of the living and the dead. The spectral forms could be ghosts or some larger, still-vibrant collective spirit. In this powerful installation, aptly chosen as the exhibition’s concluding work, the living honor the dead through the act of commemoration, and the dead in turn bind the community of the living.Until April 5 (1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd Street, 212-423-3271).

Conflict In High Resolution

Conflict In High Resolution

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