In A Beach, a series of photographs taken along the beach in the city of Jaffa/Tel Aviv, Israel/Palestine, is presented alongside a photograph from the same location by French photographer Félix Bonfils, taken in 1880. Bonfils’s image, reproduced as hand-colored postcards widely distributed to depict Jaffa at the beginning of the previous century, provides a historical reference to the area’s architectural heritage. The buildings visible in Bonfils’s photograph have since been demolished to make way for a modern boardwalk—a transformation emblematic of the gentrification process through which Jaffa becomes Tel Aviv and Palestine becomes Israel.
The only physical remnants of the previous architecture are fragments of mosaic floor tiles, now found washed up on the beach. In the exhibition, these fragments are represented as miniature replicas, accompanied by writer Johannes Wahlström’s childhood memories.
An AH-64D Apache Longbow (“Saraph”) attack helicopter plays a key role in the Israeli Air Force (IAF). By 2023, when the Israel-Hamas war breaks out, traces of a rotorcraft in one of Källström and Fäldt’s 2013 photographs of Jaffa become visible. Enlarged to reveal the same helicopter model, the image shows the aircraft returning from its daily aerial operations as part of the ongoing military conflict over Palestinian land.
A Beach, once an ordinary weekend leisure spot for local Israelis, now finds its echoes just a short helicopter ride south of Jaffa.
Book made together with 1:2:3 (Axel von Friesen and Petter Törnqvist), B-B-B- Books, 2013 Miniature replicas made by Maria Safronova Wahlström, 2015