We hope you can join us for this thought-provoking session with photographer and artist, Aviv Yaron.
Date: Sunday 16 February 2025
Time: 10am–1pm
Venue: Mulberry Room, Langdale House, 11 Marshalsea Road, London SE1 1EN (2 min walk from Borough Station)
About the topic
Aviv Yaron writes:
‘In Another Place’ is an ongoing body of work linking landscape and memory – whilst visiting trauma sites in Israel, of what used to be, until 1948, the home to Palestinian communities. Most of the places I photograph were vacated by force just before, and during, the Israeli war of independence (1947–49). Their native Palestinian occupants were never allowed back to what used to be their homes – not even when the circumstances, which led to their expulsion, changed.
Typically, there are no indications on-site, or any signage to represent the Palestinian history of these vacant locations. There are certainly no attempts by the state to commemorate the past Palestinian heritage related to these places, let alone own up to any wrong-doing that took place during the colonization of these lands. On the contrary – state institutions and indoctrinating narratives ensure any representation of the native Palestinian’s history is either completely erased from consciousness, or, at the very least, camouflaged.
‘In Another Place’ is a reflective longing for a place of being, a home, which is by now eroded by layers of contradicting historical narratives, and pain. It is an examination of a landscape – holding in mind its untold history of others. It is also a self reflection upon my own relationship to ‘Zionism’, nationalism and the place we – Jewish Israelis and Palestinians – call ‘home’.
‘In Another Place’ is a visual inquiry into the void left as the aftermath to a trauma, which in itself mostly exists in the memory of the people whose homes this landscape once was. The perpetrator’s consciousness is programmed to hold a different version of a historic narrative and geographic truths – defensively perpetuating more sufferings and injustice. These conditions entrench an escalated traumatic existence – resisting any possibility of mutual and equal co-existence, as based upon a process of reconciling the past.
For me, ‘In Another Place’ is about converting a seemingly barren landscape into a meeting place. Through its representation, and the ‘decisive observation’ my photographic process is led by – I ‘meet’ both the ‘present absentees’ (a euphemism, which, to me, includes all 750,000 Palestinian refugees – not just the 20,000 Palestinian ‘Internal Refugees’ it was originally coined to represent) and myself.
Through this relational experience of a ‘meeting’ (Buber’s over-against meeting – mutually confirming and withstanding each other*) and the framing of the void in the photographed landscape – I hope to assume the meaning which is essential for picturing ‘the other’ as ‘another’, as myself.
All in the context of the historical narratives of all involved.
The analogue medium and the chemical treatment I use layer physical traces, interference, trauma – introducing a physical depth into the photographic image and its otherwise ethereal matter. The underlying (uncanny) experience of the photographic time-paradox is therefore juxtaposed with a sense of the physical photographic matter, and a reference to an organic passage of time. Resonating traumas through the image surface also invokes mind-wandering and acts of remembering – attempting a metaphor for a ‘memory landscape’.
* Meetings: Autobiographical Fragments / Martin Buber – “A Tentative Answer, Jerusalem May 1955”
About Aviv Yaron
Aviv Yaron has been practising photography – both professionally and as an artist – since 1991. Starting as a still life photographer, he then progressed with the advancements in digital imagery to find himself at the forefront of that technological revolution. Aviv is a versed practitioner in both the analogue and the digital realms of image making. Both worlds have influenced his artistic endeavour, where he is in search of a direct contact with the photographic material and the intentions which motivate the image capture and the creative process which follows. Aviv is interested in the paradoxical notion of photographic time and ‘the meeting’ which takes place whilst at a state of a ‘decisive observation’.
Find out more on Aviv Yaron’s website and on his Instagram.
About our Pluralogues
For those new to this event, the Pluralogue is a space where we get together to both learn and socialise, meet some new colleagues and find out what others are up to.
The term ‘Pluralogue’ was coined by Doron many years ago, to depict moving beyond monologue to dialogue: to pluralogue (the conversation of many). We hope to learn together and from each other in the form of a learning community in a friendly atmosphere.
The added bonus is that we structure it as a CPD event so you will be able to count it as CPD hours (a CPD certificate will be provided as well).
Booking information
Places cost:
- £15 for Relational Spaces members
- £25 for non-members
To confirm your booking please email us at therapyroomsuk@gmail.com and we will reply with details of how to pay.
Cancellation policy
Please note we do not offer refunds for our events. However, if you ask to cancel your booking more than 7 days before the event, you’ll receive a one-time use (no-cancellation) credit for a future event.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Warm regards,
Dianne, Doron and Cressy
07426 336 322
Image: Al-Jammama_1.2 (detail-triptych) by Aviv Yaron.
