Disposable Eyes

The Pen-Pal Project

The Pen-Pal Project, by Eytan Shouker & Eldad Cidor is based on the idea of creating a personal dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli youths with the help of a creative process. The artists distributed disposable cameras to a total of five hundred young people, who, after a short introduction to photography and composition, began documenting their immediate surroundings.

The developed photographs were then returned to the participants in the form of postcards, together with the name and address of a pen pal who had been picked with the help of a questionnaire. For many participants it was the first attempt to take up friendly relations with their respective “enemy” - and this without mediators, by circumventing the border guards.

Promised Land

In her project Promised Land, which originated during the (still ongoing) Second Intifada in the summer of 2001, the artist Suzanna Lauterbach distributed disposable cameras randomly to Israelis and Palestinians of all age groups as well as to foreigners living in Israel. Their only instructions were to document whatever connotes the “promised land” for them personally today. A selection of these photographs and the texts of the participants about their own pictures offer surprising insights into the situation in Israel today.