Oren Ziv: Asylum Seekers in Israel

Oren Ziv: Asylum Seekers in Israel – Protest against Unlimited Imprisonment

Press photographer Oren Ziv co-founded the ActiveStills collective in 2005, during the Bil'in protests against the Israeli West Bank barrier. Over the years, members of the collective covered social and political protests in Israel and the West Bank. They see themselves as active participants in the protests they help to document, and their work is done out of feelings of engagement and support.

The political value of the photographs produced by the ActiveStills collective stems not only from the act of documenting communities in protest and the violence exercised against them. The impact of the images also comes from the way in which they are disseminated in the media, online, and on social networks, becoming an instrument of political protests themselves. The actions of ActiveStills point to a significant shift in photography's ability to carry critical and political power over global visual culture. Their aspire not to create a dry journalistic chronicle of victimization but to expose a state of existential instability that is the product of state policy. Their photographs communicate an urgent plea for political action.

The series depicting asylum seekers in Israel, on which the current exhibition is based, was created following Ziv's time documenting the refugee crisis in Israel and Europe. It focuses on the fight against incarceration practices at the Holot detention center in the Negev, where asylum seekers are detained without fair trial. In 2012, Ziv documented the deportation of asylum seekers from South Sudan back to their homeland. In 2013, he joined the African refugees that marched from the Holot detention center to Jerusalem, to protest against the way refugees were being treated as criminals instead of victims in search of shelter and basic human rights. Ziv documented the protests and the violent acts committed by immigration officers and police forces, who detained protesters and transported them back to the Ktzi'ot prison. A year later, he marched together with asylum seekers to the border of Egypt, where they set up a camp in order to protest against indefinite incarceration at the Holot facility. The photographer spent two days at the camp until it was evicted by police and immigration forces and refugees were forced back to the detention center.

The series Asylum Seekers in Israel depicts the current state of undocumented refugees and encompasses a range of issues, such as the border crossing, international rights, suspension of rights, and abandonment. With this series, Ziv wishes to expose the circumstances of those who have been removed from the circle of privilege to which he himself belongs. The series expresses harsh criticism against journalistic stereotypes and government-prompted media spins that depict refugees fleeing genocide as no more than criminals and terrorists.