The Edge of the City

The project, The Edge of the City, features a series of panoramic photographs taken in Jerusalem. In topographic terms, the selected observation points are scattered in the low-lying areas, in the valleys, along an imaginary axis whose general direction is east-west, from the Southern Wall and the Ben Hinnom Valley (the Cinematheque area) toward the Refa’im Stream (in the vicinity of Moshav Ora), spanning the neighborhoods Nayot, Rassco, Katamon, Ir Ganim, and Gilo. The landscape visible from these observation points is neither urban nor natural. Apart from the Southern Wall, these are places devoid of historic heroism; the majority of them are sites adjacent to the surrounding neighborhoods of the city from which social protest movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and which today stand at the forefront of the struggle waged by nature conservancy organizations.

The image of the Rogem Ganim archaeological site is akin to a second viewing of an Israeli tragic drama: railroad apartment buildings on the outskirts of an open area, an ancient tumulus (mound of stones), and a small slice of nature. These elements, which in 1950s and 1960s visual formulation were used to disseminate the values of mass settlement of the land and conquest of the wilderness, are now linked to another discourse, that of environmental conservation, as part of which the signifiers of the “wilderness” have become “leisure infrastructures,” “green lungs” and “open expanses.” In between, these places also managed to embody the Mizrahi revolution for a while.

Thanks to British Mandate law, construction in these valleys was prevented, and thus the open areas still penetrate the city. During the War of Independence suitable areas in these valleys were cultivated, and their agricultural yield was crucial in feeding the city’s besieged population. After the war, Arab orchards and olive groves were left in the area, eventually deteriorating as a result of inattention and neglect. In their stead or by their side new orchards were planted and cultivated until the early 1990s. Scorched tree stumps at the forefront of the photograph, where the Teddy Stadium tribunes rise in the distance, may be read as present signs of past violence; and not necessarily the distant past.

The photographed area between the Kidron Valley in the east and the Refa’im Stream in the west has been demarcated on the east and south by the “Jerusalem envelope route,” a euphemism for the separation fence currently being erected in the city. Against this backdrop, the barren landscapes that have remained at the margins of both the war and the news, acquire an apocalyptic air, concealing existential anxiety, alienation and desolation. In the shadow of ostensibly incontrovertible myths, spending one’s spare time in nature seems like trespassing, a positive transgression, a yearning for normalcy. At the same time, the family picnic in the Valley of the Deer is not a bourgeois event as in Édouard Manet’s well-known image; the socio-economic connotation here is rather of those who cannot afford the entrance fee to the official national parks.

Joseph Nahmias

Curator