Steve Sabella
Eight years after Israel's annexation of Jerusalem,
Steve Sabella was born. Though he continues to live
within the Old City, one wonders why none of the
photographs he submitted to the Ramallah exhibition
portrayed his city of birth. Perhaps an explanation
rests on the peculiar relationship that evolved over a
century between Sabella's language of expression and the
significance of his hometown to the outside world.
Photography was only four years old when Jerusalem
became one of the first cities outside Europe for
Western photographers to rush to capture. Arab
photographers born in the city, on the other hand,
maintained creative interests elsewhere. Khalil Ra'ad,
the earliest native-born professional (his studio was
established in 1890), is an illustrious example.5
Before him, most Western photographers recording
features of his hometown focussed on its biblical sites
and its historical and architectural monuments. Native
figures appearing in those landscapes usually served as
little more than a measure of scale. In contrast,
Ra'ad's Jerusalem photographs mainly focussed on the
life of people in and outside his city of birth. Unlike
the outsiders' images of local people that either sought
to stage biblical scenes or document ethnic and
folkloric customs, Ra'ad's photographs captured daily
life in all its throb and vigour, regardless of ethnic
or religious references. They are photographs of common
men and women enjoying leisure time or busy at work. We
see local inhabitants basking in the sun, craftspeople
before their wheels, factory workers lining up Nablus
soap bars, villagers pruning their olive trees and
farmers cultivating their fields. Today, Ra'ad's devout
concentration on his people may be better understood by
recalling that his photographs were shot at a time when
Reinhold Niebuhr's slogan "land without a people for a
people without a land" was a myth gaining currency in a
world defined by colonialism.
Since Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem's Old
City and its environs, images of every stone and every
monument within the city walls has been reduced to a
form of cliché to serve nationalist ends. To reassert
the Arab character of the city, the vanquished
Palestinians adopted the image of Jerusalem's central
monument, the Dome of the Rock, as their own icon of the
place. The victors, on the other hand, are rewriting the
city's history by appropriating and renaming everything
else within reach. Their favourite icon representing
Jerusalem as Israel's 'eternal capital' is the so-called
Tower of David. Built by Suleiman the Magnificent, the
'tower' is nothing but the minaret of a 16th century
mosque originally built for the garrison of city guards
residing in Jaffa Gate's Citadel.
As a visual artist growing up in Jerusalem, Sabella
is intuitively aware of the pitfalls of photographing
his city of birth. He has sensed how photography is used
by rivalling nationalities and employed to contribute to
the myth-making taking place. Suffocated by these images
and tired of living with the wound that divides his city
of birth, this internal exile goes into the open and
beyond the city walls to find freedom between the rocks
and the sky.
Here, from a hilltop, we see a dirt road winding up
across a burnt-out field leading into a ridge of rocks
that dissolve into the dark; there, from below a tree,
we see a ladder leaning against bare branches and
pointing straight into the sky. Elsewhere we see a heavy
cloud hovering in midair over a rock-ribbed hill; at the
end of an arid stretch of land, a mountain of pure
limestone perches against the deep blue of the sky. From
closer by, we see a mount of bare and craggy rocks aging
among wild bushes; above a slope, we see four identical
cubical dwellings that dot the horizon sharply splitting
sky from earth.
The city considered a bridge between heaven and earth
may be absent in Sabella's photographs, but everything
in these frames indicates the manner by which this
native photographer has rebuilt his own Jerusalem. Not
unlike the photographs of Ra'ad, which to an outsider
may have resembled those of ethnically-oriented
photographers of his time, Sabella's crisp work of sky
and rocks resembles work found among professional
photographers anywhere else on the globe. And yet, it is
in Sabella's conscious avoidance of photographing
Jerusalem that the visual artist has managed to recreate
the universality of a place with which he identifies. In
that respect, his search for his true self may be
likened to those monks who, drawn by Jerusalem, came
from distant lands only to spend the rest of their lives
in bare and desolate landscapes. Only there could
Sabella find a Jerusalem where he might breathe fresh
air.
Kamal Boullata is a visual artist who was born in
Jerusalem. He lives and works in France.
