Beit Keshet - After Eli Ben-Zvi

The story of Eli Ben-Zvi’s fall in the Battle of Beit Keshet during the 1948 War of Independence captivated me when I first encountered it.

The lingering question—“How did Eli fall at Beit Keshet?”— as his father, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (the second President of Israel), once asked, remains an unresolved historical silence.

 

In this B&W series, I return to the presumed site of the battle where all but one of the eight fighters were killed.

Through analog photography, I employ the camera as the eyes of Eli and his comrades.

This approach seeks to bridge the historical, the personal, and the collective,

exploring the profound connection between the physical landscape and the trauma it holds within its soil.

The mirror image—a gaze both mutual and disorienting—reflects what was and what we will never truly know.

It creates a symmetrical void: the space between us and them.