Rearview Mirror
Yair Agmon: Dissident Images
Words: Stuart I. Frolick
Surrender of Jerusalem, December 9, 1917.
In particular, he saw photographs whose content ran counter to his received knowledge growing up in Jerusalem. He found confounding pictures of well-organized, non-violent Palestinian political protests, and others of Jews and Palestinians, both women and men, working peacefully together. Agmon wondered why he’d never seen these photographs before and what they might mean.
Interviewed last November in Los Angeles, where he teaches photography to high schoolers by day and works toward his doctoral degree in Information Studies application by night, Agmon was asked what he was told about Palestinians as a child. “What was most significant is what I was not told,” he says. “I wasn’t told anything about Palestinians; nothing of their history, cultural traditions, customs, practices or universities. I wasn’t told that the War for Israeli Independence was a War of Grievance for Palestinians. Israeli children, regardless of age, are not exposed to anything other than the hegemonic state narrative. We heard much about the valorization of the Kibbutz movement; of the entrepreneurial spirit of the early European settlers (Halutzim-Pioneers) and of our need for self-determination and independence—but nothing of the resulting displacement of an estimated 711,000 refugees. We were not exposed to daily violations of their human rights.
“In Israel only Zionist history is taught; you’re oblivious to any other view. You never hear about Palestinians other than of their acts of terrorism; they don’t exist except as incompetents. What we hear is that ‘We have no partners for peace.’ Even though 20 percent of the Israeli population is Arabic (Palestinians inside the “The Green Line”), they are denounced and debased as truculent, divisive and anti-Semitic.”
Interviewed last November in Los Angeles, where he teaches photography to high schoolers by day and works toward his doctoral degree in Information Studies application by night, Agmon was asked what he was told about Palestinians as a child. “What was most significant is what I was not told,” he says. “I wasn’t told anything about Palestinians; nothing of their history, cultural traditions, customs, practices or universities. I wasn’t told that the War for Israeli Independence was a War of Grievance for Palestinians. Israeli children, regardless of age, are not exposed to anything other than the hegemonic state narrative. We heard much about the valorization of the Kibbutz movement; of the entrepreneurial spirit of the early European settlers (Halutzim-Pioneers) and of our need for self-determination and independence—but nothing of the resulting displacement of an estimated 711,000 refugees. We were not exposed to daily violations of their human rights.
“In Israel only Zionist history is taught; you’re oblivious to any other view. You never hear about Palestinians other than of their acts of terrorism; they don’t exist except as incompetents. What we hear is that ‘We have no partners for peace.’ Even though 20 percent of the Israeli population is Arabic (Palestinians inside the “The Green Line”), they are denounced and debased as truculent, divisive and anti-Semitic.”
Arab Women's Delegation to the High Commissioner, Palestine, 1929.
These are strong words, and having spoken them, Agmon is quick to point out that he is not anti-Israel, nor is he an apologist for Palestinian terrorist attacks against his people—but that he believes in the necessity for equality in human rights. In conversation he’s a thoughtful artist, with an analytic frame of mind who chooses his words carefully. His gentle temperament both defies the stereotypical macho posture of Israeli men and belies the moral outrage that fuels his personal work. He’s driven not by the assignment of blame to either side in this seemingly endless conflict, but rather, by a deep desire to know the truth.
Agmon enlisted in the Israeli military at 18 and served as a photographer in the Army Intelligence Corps documenting landscape and architecture on the Gaza Strip. While acquiring much technical expertise during his service, he also began to understand how images were used for security purposes; how they were appropriated, contextualized, circulated and disseminated. He saw, for example, that his images of buildings in Gaza might have the words “House used by snipers” or “Trading post for arms” stamped on the photograph; or, how intelligence officers constructed narratives through image captions. Agmon learned the ways in which visual information and words describing it interacted, and how the meaning of photographs could be shaped through accompanying text.
From 2009 to 2013 Agmon attended Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, entering with a portfolio of documentary street photography. While he earned a degree in photography, he says that 80 percent of his student projects were video productions. One of his projects focused on a 1983 Israeli protest against the second war with Lebanon. A grenade had been launched toward the protesters, some of whom suffered injury. Agmon’s mockumentary-style hybrid film featured simulated reenactments and interviews with participants across the political spectrum in an effort to figure out what really happened that night. Producing this piece sparked Agmon’s interest in rereading history.
Agmon enlisted in the Israeli military at 18 and served as a photographer in the Army Intelligence Corps documenting landscape and architecture on the Gaza Strip. While acquiring much technical expertise during his service, he also began to understand how images were used for security purposes; how they were appropriated, contextualized, circulated and disseminated. He saw, for example, that his images of buildings in Gaza might have the words “House used by snipers” or “Trading post for arms” stamped on the photograph; or, how intelligence officers constructed narratives through image captions. Agmon learned the ways in which visual information and words describing it interacted, and how the meaning of photographs could be shaped through accompanying text.
From 2009 to 2013 Agmon attended Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, entering with a portfolio of documentary street photography. While he earned a degree in photography, he says that 80 percent of his student projects were video productions. One of his projects focused on a 1983 Israeli protest against the second war with Lebanon. A grenade had been launched toward the protesters, some of whom suffered injury. Agmon’s mockumentary-style hybrid film featured simulated reenactments and interviews with participants across the political spectrum in an effort to figure out what really happened that night. Producing this piece sparked Agmon’s interest in rereading history.
Palestine Arabs Taking Oath of Allegiance to Arab Cause, Abou Ghosh, 1936.
After operating a print shop in Tel Aviv for three years and trying to crack the city’s insular, elitist art scene—which he found unwelcoming due to the political content of his work—Agmon moved to California and enrolled in the MFA Photo-Media Program at CalArts in Valencia. In his online research for his thesis, Start the Forgetting Machine (the reference is to an anti-colonialist essay by Martiniquan activist and poet Amié Césaire), he came across the Matson Collection of 22,000 glass and film negatives and transparencies, and 1,000 prints. He was impressed first by the quality of the pictures; their compositions and tonal range; then, he was struck by the nonpartisan language in the photographs’ captions. Most of the images in this exceptional collection were produced by The American Colony’s photo department.
The Colony was founded in 1881 by a Chicago couple, Horatio and Anna Spafford, who were among 13 adults and three children who went to Palestine to form a community in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus. A Swedish contingent of 38 adults and 17 children, also from Chicago, joined them in 1896. The photo department was established by Colony member Elijah Meyers, a Jewish convert to Christianity who’d emigrated from India. While his early photographic activity was aimed at attracting other Christians to the Holy Land with alluring landscapes of locations cited in scripture, he also began documenting daily life in and around Jerusalem. This included interaction between Arabs and Jews, and later, the presence of British military personnel.
The earliest photograph reproduced here is “Surrender of Jerusalem, December 9, 1917.” It was shot at 8:00 in the morning by Colony photographer Lewis Larrson, who captured the actual moment of the Ottoman Empire’s surrender to two British sergeants. The man raising the white flag is the Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim al-Husseini. Agmon says that after this glass-plate negative was made, British generals insisted that Larsson re-shoot the picture with them in it, but that he only pretended to do so. This historic image marking the end of Ottoman rule in Arabia was widely distributed throughout the world.
The Colony was founded in 1881 by a Chicago couple, Horatio and Anna Spafford, who were among 13 adults and three children who went to Palestine to form a community in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus. A Swedish contingent of 38 adults and 17 children, also from Chicago, joined them in 1896. The photo department was established by Colony member Elijah Meyers, a Jewish convert to Christianity who’d emigrated from India. While his early photographic activity was aimed at attracting other Christians to the Holy Land with alluring landscapes of locations cited in scripture, he also began documenting daily life in and around Jerusalem. This included interaction between Arabs and Jews, and later, the presence of British military personnel.
The earliest photograph reproduced here is “Surrender of Jerusalem, December 9, 1917.” It was shot at 8:00 in the morning by Colony photographer Lewis Larrson, who captured the actual moment of the Ottoman Empire’s surrender to two British sergeants. The man raising the white flag is the Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim al-Husseini. Agmon says that after this glass-plate negative was made, British generals insisted that Larsson re-shoot the picture with them in it, but that he only pretended to do so. This historic image marking the end of Ottoman rule in Arabia was widely distributed throughout the world.
Search for Arms en Masse Outside Damascus Gate, September 9, 1938.
Because the Colony observed and recorded interaction between Arabs and Jews without affiliating itself with either group, Agmon believes its depiction of the crucial period between 1900 and 1947 is as close to “objective” as any existing, and that it tells stories largely erased and/or forgotten. A case in point is “Palestine Arabs Taking Oath of Allegiance to Arab Cause,” made in April 1936 at Abu Ghosh, a village west of Jerusalem, in which predominantly male residents are taking the Oath of Allegiance to the Arab Higher Committee. In his graduate thesis Agmon devotes many pages of text to this image alone, detailing the circumstances leading to the revolt and the British authority’s brutal response to it. He writes: “There is a revelation here. A depiction of an autonomous, political, peaceful, non-violent, diverse, yet unified caucus of Arab men that does not compute with my array of signs and symbols. In a rendezvous of the gaze—my own and that of the Arab men—this image is radicalized. It becomes disruptive to my perspective and forces me to reimagine my paradigms, history and identity.”
Of another image of assembled Arab men, “Arab Protest Gathering in Session, Palestine, 1929,” Agmon comments: “This picture repudiates the oft-repeated claim that Palestinians are a ‘made-up people;’—that they are Arabs from different regions who have nothing to do with each other—a claim designed to delegitimize their right to self-determination and a Palestinian state. But here are groups of many people from Gaza and Jerusalem, as well as Bedouins, all organized, many in western attire, negotiating a truce with the British following a rebellion.” The photograph “Arab Women’s Delegation to the High Commissioner” made at the same conclave shows Arab women dressed in the contemporary French style, which, Agmon suggests may have signaled the rise of an Arab bourgeoisie.
“Casualty of Bomb Explosion, Jerusalem, July 4, 1938,” is important, Agmon says, because “this bus attack was perpetrated by Jews against an Arab civilian population—we can see bloodstains on the victim’s head and trauma on his face.” One of a series of four pictures of the event, this “eviscerates the myth that all violent attacks by Zionists were committed in self-defense. The price tag of Israeli vengeance on Arabs typically goes unspoken.”
Of another image of assembled Arab men, “Arab Protest Gathering in Session, Palestine, 1929,” Agmon comments: “This picture repudiates the oft-repeated claim that Palestinians are a ‘made-up people;’—that they are Arabs from different regions who have nothing to do with each other—a claim designed to delegitimize their right to self-determination and a Palestinian state. But here are groups of many people from Gaza and Jerusalem, as well as Bedouins, all organized, many in western attire, negotiating a truce with the British following a rebellion.” The photograph “Arab Women’s Delegation to the High Commissioner” made at the same conclave shows Arab women dressed in the contemporary French style, which, Agmon suggests may have signaled the rise of an Arab bourgeoisie.
“Casualty of Bomb Explosion, Jerusalem, July 4, 1938,” is important, Agmon says, because “this bus attack was perpetrated by Jews against an Arab civilian population—we can see bloodstains on the victim’s head and trauma on his face.” One of a series of four pictures of the event, this “eviscerates the myth that all violent attacks by Zionists were committed in self-defense. The price tag of Israeli vengeance on Arabs typically goes unspoken.”
Group of Elderly Jews, c. 1898-1934.
Looking at “Search for Arms en Masse,” shot outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem on September 9, 1938, Agmon asks, “How does it feel to have a foreign power come in, line you up, and treat you like sheep or cattle—occupiers in your own city?” The Matson Collection caption reads: “Citizens covered with machine gun while being searched. Large group in foreground being under temporary arrest.”
The photograph from the Jewish Factories section titled “Palestine Electric Cable Works. Testing Cables After Insulation, 1939” holds personal significance for Agmon. “I was raised by a single mom who knew the limits of a woman’s ability to scale up in the world,” he says. “She grew up on a kibbutz near Galilee, where she was taught that men, the sturdy farm workers, were most important. No one speaks of the crucial role played by Zionist women in industry, but photographs such as this confirm women’s presence in the workforce… ‘Arab Women’s Union, Ramallah, late 1930s,’ is valuable, too, because it shows that the erasure of history wasn’t based solely on land ownership, nationalism or racial terms, but also, in this instance, on sexism. Both Jewish and Arab women have fallen victim to a forceful and painful exclusion. A bridge of solidarity can be drawn between the erasure of women from the histories of Israeli and Palestinian societies. As this image suggests, Arab women were forming craft unions, but workforce exclusion is just another episode in the history of oppression of women’s autonomy and equality, a favorite of both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.”
Michal David is an American Jewish woman of Arabic descent who works for IfNotNow—an organization calling on the Jewish community to insist on freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians. As one struggling daily to end the Israeli Occupation of Gaza, she says, “Because so much of the history of Jewish and Palestinian resistance to the Occupation of Gaza is hidden, I sometimes forget that I am riding on the shoulders of a movement that is more than 70 years old. Understanding the links between past and current realities inspires me to continue to fight.”
The photograph from the Jewish Factories section titled “Palestine Electric Cable Works. Testing Cables After Insulation, 1939” holds personal significance for Agmon. “I was raised by a single mom who knew the limits of a woman’s ability to scale up in the world,” he says. “She grew up on a kibbutz near Galilee, where she was taught that men, the sturdy farm workers, were most important. No one speaks of the crucial role played by Zionist women in industry, but photographs such as this confirm women’s presence in the workforce… ‘Arab Women’s Union, Ramallah, late 1930s,’ is valuable, too, because it shows that the erasure of history wasn’t based solely on land ownership, nationalism or racial terms, but also, in this instance, on sexism. Both Jewish and Arab women have fallen victim to a forceful and painful exclusion. A bridge of solidarity can be drawn between the erasure of women from the histories of Israeli and Palestinian societies. As this image suggests, Arab women were forming craft unions, but workforce exclusion is just another episode in the history of oppression of women’s autonomy and equality, a favorite of both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.”
Michal David is an American Jewish woman of Arabic descent who works for IfNotNow—an organization calling on the Jewish community to insist on freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians. As one struggling daily to end the Israeli Occupation of Gaza, she says, “Because so much of the history of Jewish and Palestinian resistance to the Occupation of Gaza is hidden, I sometimes forget that I am riding on the shoulders of a movement that is more than 70 years old. Understanding the links between past and current realities inspires me to continue to fight.”
Group of Yemenite Jews, c. 1898-1914.
In what Agmon calls the depiction of an “everyday moment,” “Packing Oranges in Rehovoth,” he says, “We witness what we cannot witness in our current moment—a diverse, unsegregated workforce; evidence of a time in which the myths of land and ownership had not yet fully crystallized. It helps us to recognize and imagine other models for production and co-ownership that have disappeared from our social and organizational memories.”
Michal David concurs: “While the current institutional narrative would have us believe that Palestine was a ‘primitive’ and ‘uninhabited’ place prior to the arrival of Jews, images in the Matson Collection allow us to see through these false assumptions. Yair Agmon’s research, film and exhibitions of photographs provide us with hope for a different future. They allow us to relate to Palestinians in their full humanity and imagine a future in which, once again, Palestinians and Jews can live peacefully and prosper alongside one another.”
Addendum
_Learn more at yairagmon.com / Explore the Matson Collection at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html / Unbound Recollections: Yair Agmon and Hagar Cygler was exhibited at The American Jewish University’s Platt and Borstein Gallery, August 24, 2017 – October 30, 2017; curated by Rotem Rozental.
Michal David concurs: “While the current institutional narrative would have us believe that Palestine was a ‘primitive’ and ‘uninhabited’ place prior to the arrival of Jews, images in the Matson Collection allow us to see through these false assumptions. Yair Agmon’s research, film and exhibitions of photographs provide us with hope for a different future. They allow us to relate to Palestinians in their full humanity and imagine a future in which, once again, Palestinians and Jews can live peacefully and prosper alongside one another.”
Addendum
_Learn more at yairagmon.com / Explore the Matson Collection at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html / Unbound Recollections: Yair Agmon and Hagar Cygler was exhibited at The American Jewish University’s Platt and Borstein Gallery, August 24, 2017 – October 30, 2017; curated by Rotem Rozental.
Bibliography:
• Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. Published by Monthly Review Press: New York and London, 1972. Originally published as Discours sur le colonialisme by Editions Presence Africaine, 1955.
• Wikipedia: Abu Ghosh, British Mandate, The American Colony, The Matson Collection in The United States Library of Congress._
• Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. Published by Monthly Review Press: New York and London, 1972. Originally published as Discours sur le colonialisme by Editions Presence Africaine, 1955.
• Wikipedia: Abu Ghosh, British Mandate, The American Colony, The Matson Collection in The United States Library of Congress._