Keep Your Eye on the Wall
by Raja Shehadeh
In art and literature, walls are frequently used as powerful symbols of division. For the people of Palestine, however, the wall that cuts deeply into their land and society is all too real, snaking through over 700 kilometres of the West Bank. It throttles Palestinians, seals off Israelis, and all but guarantees perpetual ignorance, fear and rage on both sides. Keep Your Eye on the Wall brings together seven award-winning artist-photographers and four essayists, all responding to the Wall in images or words, specially commissioned for this book. The photographers present unique perspectives, whether documenting the journey of labourers across the barrier, the desolation of abandoned checkpoints or the tattered posters of martyrs on a wall in Gaza. Informed, critical and powerful, the photographs constitute, in the words of French philosopher of art Georges Didi-Huberman, a space for struggle . The book features photographic work from Taysir Batniji, Raed Bawayah, Rula Halawani, Noel Jabbour, Raeda Saadeh, Steve Sabella and Kai Wiedenhöfer, text from Malu Halasa, Yael Lerer, Christine Leuenberger and Adania Shibli, and a foreword from Raja Shehadeh. REFERENCE ONLY.