The Last Village Mukhtar, Dir-el-Kassi/Elkosh, from Non-Historical Moments

Joshua Glotman

2000

Portrait photograph of man in keffiyeh with two large leaves on either side of photo.
Glotman’s Non-Historical Moments project focuses on family photographs of Palestinians expelled from the village of Dir-el-Kassi during Israel’s War of Independence. A moshav, or cooperative farm settlement, called Elkosh, was built on the ruins of the village. The title of the series is a protest against what Glotman saw as the erasure of this aspect of Israeli history and his attempt to insert the collective and personal experiences of the Palestinian villagers into the historical record. The leaves flanking the portrait are fig leaves.

Credits

Courtesy of the artist.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 10.

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Creator Bio

Joshua Glotman

b. 1953

Israeli mixed media artist Shuka (Yehoshua/Joshua) Glotman is the son of Holocaust survivors. His work has been shown in Israel and abroad, including at a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2006). Since 1982, Glotman has devoted himself to community art, art education, Israeli–Palestinian dialogue, and curating. In 1987–1991, he was the head of the art workshop in Yavne, and founded the New Workshop for Art in the Ramat Eliahu neighborhood in Rishon Lezion. He lectures at Tel Aviv University and Beersheva University and lives in a small village in the Upper Galilee.

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