Category Archives: חיי הרחוב

Camels, ‘Um Batin

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Camels going about their ungulate business in the newly recognized Bedouin village of Abu Kaff ‘Um Batin, east of Beersheba, in the Negev desert.

cities and eyes

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A few more photos from the disposable camera project. I like the way these turned out – not sharp, slightly hazy. They feel more photographlike. I also liked that there was a limited number of pictures on the roll, and that once one was taken there was no way to see how it turned out. You took the photo, then it was over. It was somehow liberating.

I am going to take a break now for a while. I have been thinking of doing this for a while. I need to think about new projects.

רחוב סלומון

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Click on the photo to see it in a larger size!

רחוב סלומון, נווה שענן בדרום ת”א. צילמתי את התמונה הזו מבפנים התחנה המרכזית הישנה

Salamon Street, Neve Sha’anan, south Tel Aviv. I took this picture from inside the Old Central Bus Station  building.

old central bus station

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I haven’t had time to post for a while. Up next are photos of the Old Central Bus Station area in south Tel Aviv. It’s not a place that you’d be wise to wander around taking photos with an obvious camera, at least not alone, definitely not as a woman. Even in broad daylight it’s crowded with prostitutes soliciting on the streets and dodgy looking types popping in and out of the many sex shops and ‘peep shows’, there are groups of junkies… I hesitated before posting these because I loathe poverty tourism and gratutious poverty photography where the photographer congratulates him/herself for being ‘gritty’ and ‘real’. There’s no glamour in poverty. It’s just another word for fear. I’m posting them because this is a very depressing area, if you thought Tel Aviv was a rich city, maybe you can take another look.

Anyway, I took most of these from the inside of the abandoned old central bus station building. It’s been derelict for decades, and usually one cannot get inside.

a glimpse of a fortress

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St Basil’s Cathedral and Lenin’s Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow (early-mid 1990s).

Moscow architecture is designed to make you feel small. To make you realize the State is bigger than you. A lot bigger. That you are an ant in relation to it, a dwarf. The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, otherwise known as “St Basil’s Cathedral” is no exception.

Ivan the Terrible ordered it to be built in 1551, to commemorate his capture of the Eastern cities Kazan and Astrakhan. When it was completed, he blinded the architect to make sure he wouldn’t ever build anything as magnificent again.

How can you photograph it?

This was taken in passing, from the side, quickly, in sub zero temperatures, with a crap Russian camera.

The Soviets built Lenin’s Mausoleum on Red Square in 1925, 374 years after the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat. Inside is Lenin’s body.

You can’t take photos inside (or talk, or put your hands in your pockets.) I visited the Mausoleum by accident. Walking through the square one day, I was caught up in a huge crowd and pulled inexorably towards the Mausoleum. There was no way out. I had to file through with everyone else. It took just a minute or so to walk past Lenin. He wasn’t in good shape. It seemed his ear was falling off.

Incidentally, Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshchad) wasn’t named after the Communists. The word originally meant ‘beautiful’.