Kai Wiedenhöfer: Wall

by Kai Wiedenhöfer (Photographer)

"Over a nine meter wall you cannot shake hands," says a Palestinian pensioner who lives in the shadow of Israel's growing Separation Barrier. Kai Wiedenhàfer, who documented the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has been photographing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than a decade, has spent the last few years documenting inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territories who find themselves in the path of the barrier. He has also documented the growing barrier itself, a 650-kilometer mix of walls, fences, ditches and earth mounds that serves as a border between Israel and a projected future Palestinian entity. Working in color and black-and-white with a 6x17 cm panoramic camera, Wiedenhàfer has produced depictions of the wall--and life in its lengthening shadow--that make it hard not to share his view, informed by a life in Berlin, that separation barriers do not offer real solutions to political conflict.

104 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2007

Reviews

[Allan Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book of full-bleed, landscape images taken by photographer Kai Wiedenhofer with a Fuji GX617 panorama camera. Wiedenhofer explains in the Acknowledgements that he was persuaded to return to Israel and the Palestinian territories by writer, Christian Schmidt. Wiedenhofer found that using a 6x17 cm camera was a challenging yet joyful experience, but was the most convenient tool for the project.

The result is a well edited, diverse collection of imagery, featuring the natural and manmade landscape, with inhabitants mostly contained but some traversing the interface structures and security checkpoints.

The book is produced to a very high standard, with thick paper and rich, deep colours. As one would expect from publisher, Steidl.