Dateline : Israel : new photography and video art /

Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, curated by Goodman, this catalog presents Israel as the subject in photographic and video format in the years following 2000. The catalog includes three essays, plates, and artist biographies. Also included are an exhibition checklist, notes, a selected bibliography, and an index. Catalog essayists Grundberg, Perez, and Goodman inform the works, providing insight into the complex realities of place and life in Israel. The images have been captured by mostly Israeli and some non-Israeli artists, including one Palestinian. These lens-based works evoke militant journalistic documents, yet are reframed into unflinching works of art of the current political, physical, and territorial issues facing Israel. In a manner that is visually powerful, controversial, and thought-provoking, the artists bring their own personal and complicated views to portraits, landscapes, urbanscapes, other imagery, and videos of conflict and daily life in the area. Grundberg ends his essay, as an epigram for these art works and artists, with Belgian artist Francis Alys's title for the exhibition of his video The Green Line (unavailable for this exhibition): "Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic," certainly an alternate title for this exhibition as well. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. J. Fraas Oakton Community College