A Part of Nature

 

For me, it all started with the Carmel, the mountain and forest I used to roam since I was a kid. The rocks, the smells, and the landscape overlooking the sea are etched in my mind. I have gotten to know every trail in it, and when the trails ended, I simply climbed the mountain in the open forest. I liked to climb to spots that I knew people never reach, and just lay on the ground and listen to the silence. 

One path that I used to take regularly on Saturday mornings is the stream that leads from Kibbutz Yagur up Isfiya village. In the wadi that I have known since I was a kid there are nine cars had fallen into it years ago – I have no idea why and how it happened, but every time I went there I was surprised all over again that in the middle of the mountain, in such a lush and tranquil place, were machines rusting and falling apart. Since I visited the wadi very often, I witnessed the changes and developments around these vehicles. In winter, some of the cars slid a few meters with the flood; sometimes a tree would collapse on them or grow into them; hikers would leave their mark, scribbling their name on them. The vehicles became an inseparable part of the stream. It was obvious that no one was going to clear them away and no one was bothered by the fact that they were there; they became an integral part of nature, just like the trees around them. 

When I started my art studies at Shenkar College, I stopped going to the wadi. I used to come for short family visits and didn’t have time to take a walk in the forest. In my third year, when Tom and I were already in the process of working on our first exhibition together, I told him about the wadi and the cars and asked that we go specifically to photograph them. And so it was. The first time we went there was in the winter. The wadi was muddy, and we got there late at night. We struggled to carry the camera and our bulky equipment inside the forest. At first, I felt that Tom regretted agreeing to my suggestion, but for me it was a really happy moment. I have never been to the wadi in the middle of the night, let alone take photos. 

After this night of photographing, we returned to the wadi a couple more times, and photographed each car several times at different times of the year. After about a year, we realized that this was what we wanted to do: look for metal machines that somehow found their way to deserted places and were abandoned there. At this point, we realized that the wadi was not enough and that we had to keep searching for other machines that would “tell” us their stories. And so, our new journey began. 

 

Nati Hoki 

Nati Hoki (b. 1993) collaborates with his artistic partner Tom Ariel (b. 1990). Both draw strength and autonomy from their encounters. Each interaction with the environment serves as a juncture of artistic possibilities that they explore together. 

 

The Tension Between Light and Darkness 

To me, Nati Hoki and Tom Ariel’s photograph Bus from the Mechanical Archeology series (which includes two other photos, of a ship and an airplane) reflects a deep and multifaceted liminality between the artificial and the natural, between reality and imagination (or fiction) and between documentation and interpretation. All the photos in this series capture old vehicles that have long succumbed to the ravages of time, but still clearly reflect their identity. The vehicles are illuminated by spots of light that produce an artificial impression and subtly interact with the vegetation that surrounds them (more noticeable in the bus photo than in the other images). The photographs are not banal, and require careful examination. Placing them in the corridor that connects the Faculty of Law and the University Forum offers an opportunity, and even guidance, for such an examination. 

Hoki and Ariel’s bus photo captures a bus that came to a halt and was abandoned. It immediately echoes another photograph, which carries important legal-historical baggage: Alex Levac’s 1984 photograph. Levac’s photo captured the bus from the Bus 300 Affair, empty after its passengers had already left it. It similarly depicts an old bus photographed from the front and leaning to the left, with vegetation on the edge of the frame. Famously, the important photograph in that series is not that of the bus, but the one that showed the two terrorists who were taken off it alive, contrary to what the Shin Bet claimed, and were later killed. The Bus 300 Affair was a critical watershed moment that tested the relationship between the Shin Bet and security norms in Israel and the rule of law. Ultimately, the rule of law 

prevailed, but at a heavy cost (including amnesties for those involved in the affair, who knowingly perjured themselves and based on extraneous considerations, endeavored to interfere with the legal proceedings and falsely accused an innocent person with grave allegations). 

This is a powerful mimesis that casts a heavy shadow on the picture of the bus before us. With this in mind, the tension between light and darkness in Hoki and Ariel’s work is not only a part of the photographic creative process (a process and medium that were known early on as “heliography,” i.e., “sun painting”). It is a subject matter that carries a heavy moral and ethical weight. Beyond the aesthetic quality, the tension between light and shadow imbues the photograph, and perhaps also those who look at it and at the entire series, with an ethical message that touches on the movement and the path, on things to come, and on the struggles that we must win so as to ensure the place where we live will be run as it should. 

 

Sharon Shakargy 

Prof. Sharon Shakargy is the Judge Harry M. Fisher chair in private international law and interreligious law in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University.