Adi Nes: The Village

The staged pastoral scenes of The Village created by Israeli photographer Adi Nes reflect both the idyllic fantasies and challenging realities of modern-day Israel. “The country started with a dream, and then more and more, we decided to ignore the dream,” the artist said. “I’m trying to bring myself back to the dream without forgetting the reality.”

Growing up as a gay Sephardic Jew, Adi Nes felt like an outsider, set apart from the mainstream Israeli culture that promoted a particular type of masculinity. He equates this outsider status with the role of a photographer, who in his words, is “the person who looks at things from the side.” His photographs are complex, vibrant depictions that present open-ended narratives, engage themes of individual and collective identity, allude to art history, and investigate the history and politics of Israel.

The year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Middle East War, which resulted in Israeli forces gaining full command of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – the West Bank and Gaza – as well as the Golan Heights and Sinai. The complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began when Israel was founded in 1948, continues to revolve around issues of how and whether to divide territories between two peoples, if the Palestinian territories can become an independent state, and how to resolve decades of violence.  Adi Nes’s photographs present a nuanced, personal view of modern-day Israel nearly seventy years since its founding. They are dreamlike, even surreal at times, presenting not only an idealized countryside, but also expressing the difficult personal feelings that arise in this world: fear, terror, and existential questioning.