Them, by Rosalind Fox Solomon, book review: Photography

Rosalind Fox Solomon spent five months in Israel and the West Bank during 2010–2011, working in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Nahariya, Bethlehem and Jenin. Travelling by local bus with commuters, she photographed Jewish teenagers at Purim, Christians at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Ghanaian pilgrims at the Mount of Olives. The photographs contain numerous interwoven narratives, some with particular political charge.

Her photographs are informed by an acute sensitivity to lives conditioned by race and religion, ethnicity and location. Through a cacophonous image sequence, Solomon articulates the turmoil of her experience of the region. She says: “I felt the tension. The stress ... I wanted to express the chaos and pressure that was around me.”

Punctuating the images are fragments of text – amusing and frightening background conversations, recorded in Solomon’s journal; the texts reveal the humanity of each person photographed, a window on to lives conditioned by violence and uncertainty.

Solomon, an American artist based in New York, has had work shown in nearly 30 solo exhibitions, and in the collections of more than 50 museums globally.