Realising Palestine: Israel's Popular Photographic Cultures in the post-1967 War Period

In this paper I looked into the emergence of photographic cultures in Israel of the post-1967 War period. In doing so I focused on the participation of photographs that Jewish-Israelis captured within the West Bank in performances and celebrations of Israel’s 1967 War victory. Jewish-Israelis started flooding into this territory only a week after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war ended. Commonly carrying cameras, they subsequently photographed in spaces that just returned to accommodate more prosaic activities than armed conflict. In a short period of time the West Bank became a popular travel destination for Jewish-Israelis, and therefore also a common site for popular photographic production. Drawing on research into historical periodicals, Israeli national photo collections, and ethnographic work with 46 individual participants, in this paper I established an understanding of the function the photographs played in the Israeli reality of the postwar. I demonstrated that the photographs Jewish-Israeli citizens captured in the West Bank during that period had informed their understanding of Israel’s claimed right to this territory along with their perception of its Palestinian residents. Allowing the voice of research participants to shed light on the lives the photographs have lived in the Jewish-Israeli household, I argued that the photographs helped Jewish-Israeli citizens cement their perceived historical relationship to the West Bank. At the same time they also reassured the itinerants as well as their friends and families that their morality was intact, the situation in the country safe, and their relationship with the Palestinians affable.