The olive tree, a mistreated symbol in occupied land

“No one says to an olive tree: ‘How beautiful you are!’ But: ‘What nobility and what splendor!'” wrote the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The tree that carpets the hills of the West Bank is a symbol for its people. A source of income, it embodies their resistance and their roots in this land occupied by Israel since 1967. Adam Broomberg, a 53-year-old South African Jewish artist, and Rafael Gonzalez, a 27-year-old German and Spanish photographer, who both live in Berlin, have immortalized these olive trees of the West Bank, some of which are thousands of years old, in a series of portraits. The tree is at the center of the image, catching the eye in the details of its gnarled trunk. In the background, Palestinian life appears: the wall erected by Israel, the dense housing, the cemetery.

“I have never seen trees this old! Standing next to the 4,500-year-old Al Badawi olive tree and touching it was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life, remembers Adam Broomberg. Think of all that this tree has witnessed, how many empires it has seen come and go… These olive trees, so powerful in the still portraits of their book Anchor in the Landscape (“anchoring in the landscape”, not translated), are threatened.

Since 1967, at least eight hundred thousand trees have been uprooted, burned or destroyed by Israeli authorities or settlers. Two of the olive trees in the book have been cut down since the photos were taken. “It is very important that some kind of archive exists to prove the existence of these trees, which have been there for so long but have become so vulnerable.” for more than fifty years, judges Adam Broomberg.

Stone throwing and checkpoints

Each portrait is titled with the GPS coordinates of the olive tree. The whole draws a map that focuses on the southern West Bank, in the Hebron region, where Israeli settlers are installed in the heart of the old Palestinian city. Adam Broomberg founded the NGO Artists + Allies × Hebron (AAH) there with Issa Amro, a famous 44-year-old Palestinian activist who is fighting to stay on his land. His terrace overlooks an olive grove. The duo of photographers worked in the field using a large format view camera that requires both time and precision. Being two people avoided exposing themselves too much to danger.

« One day we were inside Issa Amro’s house in Hebron and we were surrounded by settler children. There were about thirty or forty of them and they started throwing stones at us,” reports Rafael Gonzalez, whose first published corpus this is. On the ground, “Adam was pushed and hit by settlers several times, he continues. It took much longer than we expected to take the photos “The other challenge was to ensure that the films were not exposed to light during checkpoint or airport inspections.

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