"Seascape" Qattan Foundation is hosting a photography exhibit in Ramallah by the photographer Jamil Daraghmeh entitled "Seascape." This exhibit presents winter photographs of feet walking in puddles of water on the asphalt. The feet, the wheels, all are in continuous movement despite their amputation and despite the stillness of the fixed picture occupying its space. The light grey space of the images leaves the viewer contemplating the locality of the moment and its continuity. The exhibition scene increases in its terrain and depth. As the viewer leaves one hall into the next, he or she is welcomed by an image of piled rocks with a small stream running though them. At the bottom of the image there is a spider web, partially hidden under the light. On each side of this hall there are two images of a grey space with edges of broken objects… details here do not matter. “Seascape” is not of a romantic scene of a blue sky or a warm sun, it is not of a summer holiday or a lovers’ sunset. It is an alternative scene to what you’d feel leaving the sea behind and when winter is taken over by a dry space. The amputated images leave you with a sense of loss. The absence of color and the scattering of the blue dream replaced by the white and black, sometimes grey, force the creation of new images of the absent/present. The sea in “Seascape” leaves the classical picture frame, because such frames do not express what we know of the sea. For the inner scene of the sea is more realistic and closer to the photographed experience that begins (perhaps ends) with difficulty, or impossibility, of arriving to Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberius, Kyssaryeh, Gaza, or Acre, for it is a painful experience and without doubt harsh. Then the sea scene hung on these white walls expresses all those things forbidden in the space of the sea. The winter’s sea goes beyond its waters to represent the space that has been raped and amputated. We notice that the amputated parts in these images are completed with their shadows and their reflections in the collected water. Therefore, the image is upside down in its shadow: the rain water, wetness and cold, the winter taking over the memory of a sea never seen, and becomes a dream that despite the reality creates different worlds that replace the feelings of deprivation. The exhibit form in the Qattan gallery shocked me at the first glance. I had seen the images before enlarging and exhibiting them; it seemed that there were more of them. It seemed to me that each image is part of a series, I had glanced quickly at these images organized before me, and I went on with my work, without realizing that I had created a complete image of the exhibit in my mind. Yesterday, as I walked through the gallery, looking at the photographs, then partaking in the social interaction with friends, I felt that something was missing. Not all the images were included, only a few. Also, these exhibited were not put within a series, but each stood oddly alone. I resented the interference with the story of the exhibit, and I thought that the exhibit curator noticed my dissatisfaction because he quickly answered me defensively: why do we insist on exhibiting images in a sequence, each image could speak on its own. Each photograph tells its own story isolated from the whole exhibit. I restrained myself from wanting to argue, but I could not hide my feelings of dissatisfaction. Near the end of the opening night, and after everyone had left, I had a chance to examine the exhibit from the curator’s point of view, he was not only referring to the exhibit itself, but referring to the question of why is it difficult to challenge present ideas and thoughts? Why is it easier for us to accept things as they are without challenge? I looked at the exhibition invitation card; it is an image of the sun’s reflection in a puddle in the midst of the asphalt, and it appears to the viewer as if it is the sun in the middle of a dark sky. And I thought to myself: “perhaps, if we revered the image or we changed the structure of things just a little, maybe we would see new realities. Isn’t that what the artist Jamil Daraghmeh wanted us to see in this exhibit? Then I looked straight at an image that caught my attention when I first walked into the exhibit, the photograph of the amputated legs… Where are these amputated legs going? To the sea? Perhaps? Maybe they are walking above the water…Do they know they can swim as well? Perhaps even dive vertically deeper…
The Fine Arts Program at Birzeit University hkarkar@birzeit.edu |