In February 2011 I traveled to the Negev Desert in southern Israel to prepare a documentary film for Israel's Public Television on the work of park rangers in the region. For several days we covered a vast area, large parts of which are normally out of bounds for the general public because of the need to protect the natural habitat of birds, reptiles and wild animals. Other parts are off limits because they serve as firing zones for the Israeli army and one needs a special permit to venture into them.
As we drove eastward the landscape became increasingly harsh and desolate with little or no vegetation. Entire mountain sides were covered with black stones that created an eerie, Death Valley, atmosphere. The black painted desert stood in sharp contrast to white dirt roads that crisscrossed the barren and forbidding landscape, which was totally bereft of human presence. A military helicopter flying overhead was our sole companion.
Eventually, we came upon a wreckage of a bus that must have served as a target during bombing exercises of Israeli fighter bombers. I noticed imprints left by movements of heavy weighing tanks, another sad reminder of the military conflict that still rages in this part of the world, with the desert soil and its fauna and flora being part of a long list of helpless and senseless victims.
The desert has been, since Biblical times, the place to go to for people who sought answers, solace and redemption. No inspiration or respite was to be found in this God-forsaken part of the Negev.
In fact, this inhospitable, inaccessible and disquieting environment, strewn with military debris and intersected by dirt roads leading nowhere, reflected for me a violent and fractured world that seems to have lost its human and moral road map.
I present these ten photographs as a visual lament on human folly, greed and violence, which inflict a daily and irreversible damage on our planet, destroying our precious environment and all living creatures - and our sense of hope for a respectful, serene and peaceful future.
