An Innocent Politics?

In this talk I discussed the politics of family photography through imagery taken in Israel. Taking collections of family photographs from both the domestic and public sphere, I explored the interrelationship between the politically contested circumstances in Israel, and the various ways that family photography enters the political realm.

Rather than seeing Israelis as either victims or victors, I considered how members of the Israeli community use family photography to both face their daily reality and to negotiate through it. While some in Israel use these photographs as platforms on which to project their social position and place themselves within history, many are in fact used as expressions of resentment and resistance to the state.

This talk described how family photographs encompass the complex relationship Israelis have with themselves, with their own experience of the past and their constructed past and, above all, with the state.