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EXPOSURES
LAND SURVEY
VISION QUEST
A NEW BOOK BY YAAKOV ISRAEL TELLS THE STORY OF
THE ISRAELI PHOTOGRAPHER’S YEARS-LONG SEARCH FOR
UNDERSTANDING WITHIN HIS COUNTRY’S BORDERS.
BY CONOR RISCH
All photos © YAAkov Isr Ael
Above: “The Man On The White Donkey, HaBiqah, 2006.”
ISRAEL’S POLITICAL, historical and religious significance makes it one of the most
heavily scrutinized nations in the world. Much is written and said about Israel in the
global media, by academics and by politicians, and a lot of that discussion and analysis ends with fierce declarations from experts, pundits and armchair analysts about
what Israel should do politically, militarily and socially. It seems as if everyone has an
opinion about Israel, but how much do they actually know about it?
For those who’ve seen his large-format landscapes and portraits, photographer
Yaakov Israel has provided an opportunity to look more closely at Israel in a way that
is curious rather than hypercritical, inquisitive rather than conclusive. His new book,
The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey (Schilt), is the product of a years-long
exploration of the nation of Israel that focuses on small details in the landscape that
reveal something of its inhabitants—past and present—and on Jewish, Christian
and Muslim people the photographer has come to know along the way.
Israel, who was raised in southwest Jerusalem, says he was initially inspired
by the tradition of American photographic journeys made by the likes of Timothy
O’Sullivan in the 1800s and Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shore in the
latter half of the twentieth century. After embarking on the project, however, Israel
realized that the small size of his country, which allowed him to travel to its borders
and return home at night, meant that his journey would be quite different. “I under-
stood that this wouldn’t be a journey in the conventional, geographical way,” Israel
recalls. “It’s more like a mental journey through the land.”
What he wanted to do with the work, he says, is tell a story that would convey his
experiences of people and places, and how those encounters affected his personal
understanding of “the place that I was born in and live in today.”
Israel wanted social, political and religious issues to “exist in the work in a very
subtle manner.” But he warns, “This is not a collective understanding, it doesn’t rep-
resent Israel in any way. It represents the way I was discovering it, and tells a story
that is built around this journey and the experiences that came with it.”
The book’s title is taken from the Orthodox Jewish belief that the Messiah will re-
turn dressed in white robes, with a white beard and long white hair, astride a white
