Pavel Wolberg

Hebron

In Pavel Wolberg’s Hebron a young settler girl, dressed in a bridal outfit for Purim, stands in a street in Hebron waiting, perhaps for her parents or other children to join her. In the background three soldiers scan the buildings and the rooftops for threatening presences. Turning her back to the soldiers, the little girl pays no attention to what surrounds her. Her gaze is directed beyond the picture’s frame. The soldiers do not seem to protect the child either, their eyes and guns are pointed in different directions. Two of them seem to be looking at the camera, which brings the picture back to a certain reality. In this photograph, as in the one with the disguised boy, there is a palpable tension and the contradictory representation of two realities: the war and childhood innocence. Moreover, in both photographs, the costume implies fiction and may suggest that feelings are hidden. Wolberg’s images portray violence, but very differently than what you expect from war reportage, for example the terrible images of children during the Vietnam war like the famous photograph by Kim Phuc. Pavel Wolberg observes the incongruities of life in Israel, where trying to carry on a “normal” life can sometimes create absurd situations.