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May 2006
Close Study Photograph courtesy Jason Eskenazi
Jason Eskenazi arrived in Jerusalem in 2004 with 25 point-and-shoot cameras, 250 rolls of film, and an ambitious idea: teach photography to children from the local Muslim and Jewish communities. Though the groups were taught separately, his aim was to get them to see the city they share from each other's point of view. This image from his "Kids With Cameras" workshop shows a girl reading the Koran near her house in the city's Muslim quarter. It was made by her sister Raneen, who is now 13. Eskenazi never asked for his students' surnames. "It was a way to protect them," he says. "This can be a dangerous place."
Why Was This Photo Selected? By Susan Welchman, Illustrations Editor
Of all the pictures that this group of Jewish and Arab children shot in Jerusalem, this one stood out the most as being kind of mysterious. You couldn't tell whether this child wore these clothes or was dressed in a sheet or was actually being played like a little actress. But the combination of a few elements looked so Old World. This alley with a little, white bundle hovered over what looks like a very old manuscript and reading it, the lighting and the texture of the walls, the vanishing point in the background all contributed to making you feel like you were walking down this ancient street, and you had just run across some timeless figure. There are very few colors, yellow and white and some other colors. This figure is not in the middle of the photograph, but slightly over to the side. The photograph is divided into sections. You could say pie-shaped with three sections, and each of them with their own interest. The shutter in the left-hand pie, the child with the book in the middle pie, and the right-hand piece of pie with the vanishing point and the pathway to the back. They all contribute to a beautifully balanced, beautifully captured moment that you fully believe.
