Michal Ronnen Safdie | Under My Window
Meislin Projects is pleased to present Under My Window, an exhibition of photographs by Michal Ronnen Safdie opening March 14.
The photographs are taken from her home’s third story vantage point window, perched on a hill, in the Old City of Jerusalem along the border between the Jewish and Muslim Quarters. To the East, there is the Western Wall precinct, the Dome of the Rock, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque; to the North, the Muslim Quarter unfolds with Mt. Scopus in the horizon; and to the West is the Holy Sepulcher Church and the Christian Quarter.
Ronnen Safdie captures private and personal moments, daily life, confrontations, as well as rituals and festivals happening side by side. The photographs highlight the social and political forces that shape life in the city today, as they have for millennia. They reveal an intimate portrait of a neighborhood comprised of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who share a literal common ground of place and humanity.
In the words of Professor Homi Bhabha, “The photographs have a spare, unstated beauty that places human figures in the realms of the architecture of the ages. Through the interaction between flesh and stone, Ronnen Safdie finds a way of bridging public life and intimate experience, religious ritual and everyday customs… The photographs show a people who live separate lives, while the spaces in which they dwell and worship are entangled and nested one within the other like an urban crossword puzzle for which we cannot find the clue of coexistence.”
The exhibition will remain on view through April 18. Under My Window is accompanied by a publication of the same name, published by powerHouse Books in two editions, with a large-scale, limited-edition measuring 12.4 x 17. 2 inches. Featuring over 60 of Ronnen Safdie’s photographs from this series, the book also includes her anecdotal notes of each photographic encounter.
Michal Ronnen Safdie’s photographs have been noted for their unusual range, encompassing subjects from the natural world—including studies of ice, anthropomorphic trees, and vapor trails—as well as human crisis and sociopolitical issues, like refugees from Darfur, Gacaca trials in Rwanda, the Western Wall, migrant workers’ quarters in East Asia, and orthodox women in Israel. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Ronnen Safdie was educated in the fields of sociology and anthropology. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. She divides her time between Jerusalem and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment.