A Journey Exploring Human Life

Within the framework of Photomenta, the Alexander Museum of Postal History and Philately is hosting photographs and video works that invite viewers to embark on a journey in the footsteps of various people and their homes, families and memories. The works include documentary photographs of everyday life in Libya, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority and Morocco, as well as artworks from Greece, Morocco, Israel and Tunisia. The documentary photographs feature mainly portraits of "mountain and village people" - captured during anthropological photography expeditions to communities who seem to live lives frozen in time. The art photographs of the Israeli and French photographers include references to the private immigration histories of the photographers, while the photograph from Greece alludes to metaphorical experiences of loneliness and alienation associated with the digital age and the loss of physical memory.

 

The Alexander Museum of Postal History and Philatelyis dedicated to the history of local postal services - the means of communication that connected people throughout the Mediterranean sphere - against the backdrop of the historical, social and political changes occurring in the region over time.

 

Photomenta features the works of some 30 photographers from Mediterranean countries. The exhibition extends throughout the museum pavilions, the Migdal Gallery and the Archaeological Garden. These different sites serve as "port cities" from which visitors can embark on a journey throughout the Mediterranean.

 

 

Raed Bawayah (Palestinian Authrity/France), Safe Trip (Roma woman nursing her son), France, 2006-2010

 

 

 

Hicham Benohoud (Morocco), Acrobatics, 2017

 

 

 

Faten Gaddes (Tunisia/France), Trompe l'oeil, from the series Travelogue, 2012-2021

 

 

 

Tamir Zadok (Israel), Jewish Wedding in Morocco, video, 2:15 minutes, 2014

 

 

 

Theodor Papadakis (Greece), Home Again, 2016

 

 

 

Nadir Buçan (Turkey), Under the Shadow of the Sun, 2011-2021

 

 

 

Hinda Weiss (Israel), Postcard from Tel Aviv, digital collage, video, 8:23 minuets, 2015

 

 

Between the Continents

Within the framework of Photomenta, this display combines documentary photographs of everyday life in Palermo, Sicily, centered on members of the Sicilian mafia; portraits of African refugees working in Bari, Italy; and typological photographs of the ancient part of Valletta, the capital of Malta. The video work from Montenegro symbolically echoes these three series, and Israeli viewers may find in it an echo of the memory of the Holocaust.

 

 

Letizia Battaglia (Italy), Photography as a Life Choice, 1975-1995

 

 

 

Maria Pansini (Italy), Blanket, 2017

 

 

 

Siniša Radulović (Montenegro), Things We Haven't Found inside the Walls, video, 5:43 minutes, 2015

 

 

 

David Pisani (Malta), Vanishing Valletta, 1982-2011