See-Shoot, Bread and Roses gallery, 2024
Curator: Keren Zaltz​
 
The historic watchtower, standing between Kibbutz Nir David and Kibbutz Messilot, was built in 1938 as part of the “Wall and Watchtower” operation, intended to create a sequence of fortified agricultural Jewish settlements. These days, the tower overlooks Springs Valley, a delightful nature preserve attracting many visitors. Anat Wasserman grew up in Mesilot and served as a lookout during her military service on Israel’s northern border. She began going up to the watchtower in 2018, carrying a camera with a telephoto lens. She took photos and videos of the happenings around the springs at the foot of the tower’s hill. As a photographer, Waserman also operates as a lookout: she observes methodically, scans the area systematically, searches for prominent elements, and follows their movements. Her actions track the same military set of observations that had existed since ancient times for gathering visual information, but attempt to re-examine the power status of the observer and the complexity of the relations of the photographer and the photographed, who are unaware of her actions. Waserman points her camera at a public, civil space that is not threatened, an area dedicated to recreation and tourism. The camera captures the vacationers as they perform simple activities, like running to the water or strolling hand-in-hand, but the way she captures them - in quick, frenetic motion - creates a sense of alertness and disquiet. The images are grainy and blurred because of the camera’s high-sensitivity sensor, reminiscent of aerial and security photography. The bathing area Wasserman observes is revealed as an enclosed space with means of control – metal gates, stairs, electric wires – which mark it as a zone requiring observation. The local council has, in recent years, imposed changes in the touristic concept and the branding of the area. The process began with changing the name from the ‘Beit She’an Valley’ to ‘Springs Valley,’ moving on to physical activities such as setting up fences and barriers that block vehicle access and setting up a system to control the approach to the springs. These moves have remade the nature preserve as a politically explosive territory and reopened the social issues relating to control of the country’s natural treasures.The “See/Shoot” system is an advanced military one, which includes means of surveillance and shooting installed in the tower and a remote-controlled system, located in an outpost. The system is positioned near the fence and is operated by lookouts. The military’s choice to post only women for this task, within a hierarchical, patriarchal system, represents a clear position vis-à-vis the gendered perception of the role, which gains force in the face of the dismissal of the repeated warnings by the lookouts in the months preceding the October 7 attack. Wasserman returns to the job she has been trained for, albeit from the point of view of a photographer-artist, observing a visual field that cannot be qualified only as a threat or a security issue and contains blurry gray zones that require a more complex deciphering.An instruction brochure for American Navy lookouts was published in 1943. It ends with this sentence: “remember that your ability as a guard may be the difference between a great victory and a bitter defeat.” Today, it echoes the unperceivable failure, the consequences of which we have been forced to live with in the past year. Fourteen lookouts and information-gathering supervisors were killed in the Nahal-Oz outpost on October 7, and seven lookouts were abducted. As I write this, five of them are still being held in captivity. I dedicate this exhibition to them.