Struggling To Share The Promised Land
David Lurie
Feb 22 - Mar 20, 2011
Free entry

Launch Event
Sun, Mar 6, 4pm with
Martyn Stanton Harris, Shira Geffen, Rabai al-Madhoun, Ivor Dembina and Shaun Levin

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Between 1995 and 2001, photographer David Lurie documented life on the streets in the Palestinian territories and Israel. The powerful images in this exhibition are a timely reminder of the fragile and fraught co-existence which exists to this day; a state of tension which continues to divide opinions among the people of both Palestine and Israel.

“The occupation is corrupt, and it corrupts by its very nature. It denies all human rights, including the right to property. It fills the occupied territories with an atmosphere of general lawlessness. It enriches the occupier and everybody connected with him. It creates a climate of wanton cynicism, an environment of "anything goes". Such an atmosphere does not stop at the Green Line. It permeates the state of the conqueror. That's where the rot [originally]  set in.” - Uri Avnery, journalist, peace activist and former Member of the Israeli Knesset.

 “Disengagement is a response to certain demographic realities, ... Within a few years, due to the higher Arab birth rate, Jews will become a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. I don't want [Israel] to be South Africa because we don't believe in apartheid. We simply have to separate from the Palestinians so that we can control our own destinies.”
                "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished." - Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel.

The current coalition government of ethno-religious Nationalists in Israel clearly does not agree with any of the above. Their current participation in peace negotiations appears cynical, if acceptance of a viable independent Palestine state and withdrawal from occupied territory is a prerequisite for lasting peace. Few commentators are hopeful of a successful negotiated outcome, with grave consequences for the long term survival of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. To continue forever governing a resentful Palestinian population is simply impossible. Occupation is the real existential threat to Israel. - David Lurie

For more information on this exhibition and David Lurie, visit his website
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EXHIBITION
Feb 22 - Mar 20, 2011
Free entry


Picture
LAUNCH EVENT
Sun. Mar 6, 4pm
With Martyn Stanton Harris, Shira Geffen, Rabai al-Madhoun, Ivor Dembina and Shaun Levin...
Click to go to launch event

About David Lurie

David Lurie was born in Cape Town. He studied economics, politics and philosophy and taught philosophy at the University of Cape Town. From 1980 to 1985 he undertook research in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics, after which he worked as a consultant-economist in London. A self-taught photographer, he began doing documentary projects part-time in 1990 and full-time in 1995.

Lurie’s work has been widely published in magazines and he has exhibited in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Australia, South Africa and the Middle East. He is the recipient of numerous awards including Pictures of the Year International; the World Understanding Award for Cape Town Fringe: Manenberg Avenue is where it’s Happening; Nikon (UK); Ilford Pro Photo (SA); and Arts Council of Great Britain Award Grants. He has worked closely with Side Photography Gallery (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), which commissioned several of his South African exhibitions as well as ‘Struggling to Share the Promised Land’ on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1993 the Getty Museum (Los Angeles) commissioned the exhibition ‘South Africa’s Black Middle-Class’.

For the past 10 years, David Lurie has collaborated with the London based designer Richard Wilding on the editing and production of his books and exhibitions. For more information about David, visit his website.