This year as part of the third annual Jerusalem Season of Culture (July 1 to August 23, 2013), 2013 Artist of the Season Tal Erez has been commissioned to create 18 Jerusalem-specific ViewMaster wheels of 7 photographs each, which provide viewers with intimate and multifaceted insights into Jerusalem’s diverse narratives. A limited edition of 1,000 A Point of View wheels will be on view and sold at the new First Station complex at the Old Train Station Plaza in Jerusalem from July 8 to 28, 2013. Each of the 18 wheels focuses on a different aspect of Jerusalem including photographs depicting daily life in Jerusalem, religion and history, politics and protest, food and nightlife and more.
In Erez’s wheel entitled Battlefield, he presents Jerusalem as a more human, softer and much more mundane kind of battlefield than that typically portrayed through images of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, stone throwing at the Western Wall, riots at the Temple Mount or disturbances in East Jerusalem neighborhoods. For example, instead of a Palestinian boy throwing a stone at a Border Policeman, Erez chose to include a picture of a young ultra-orthodox boy throwing a snowball at a passing ambulance (picture no.1, photography by Dor Karmi). Instead of the religious war and inter-religious tension which has characterized Jerusalem for decades, Tal selected a picture which portrays a bloodied Christian actor/believer in the Via Delarosa carrying a cross on his back (picture no. 2, photography by Ziv Koren).