Images from Against the Wall

July 20th, 2010 § 2 Comments

Graffiti by Ron English (Photo by POW)

Last week we posted the introduction to photojournalist William Parry’s new book Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine, in which he documents West Bank Wall graffiti and his interactions with Palestinians whose lives are made nearly impossible under the guise of ensuring Israeli security.

Below are assorted images from the book, with captions and relevant excerpts from the text. All photographs, captions and text by William Parry.

Contact Parry at againstthewall_thebook@yahoo.co.uk.

Check back next week for the Wall-related saga of one particular Palestinian family Parry encountered.

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[British street artist] Banksy’s dove with flak jacket and cross-hairs, Bethlehem:

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Banksy’s image of a girl frisking an Israeli soldier:

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Ahmad, outside Bethlehem checkpoint, 2006. He sells gum after school but says he wants to be a doctor when he is older:

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Beyond this gate lies Rachel’s Tomb. The area, with shops and several beautiful traditional homes with gardens of fragrant jasmine and olive trees, is now a wasteland, the buildings and businesses largely abandoned – over 90 percent of the shops and commercial establishments have closed or relocated, UN OCHA reports. Artwork by Blu, Who’s paying for this? by Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillips, and With love and kisses by the New York collective, Faile:

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[New York street artist Swoon describes her artwork:]

‘The… image [pictured here and located opposite the Aida refugee camp] was pasted onto a spot that had been stained by fire. The fire was started in protest because it was there that a 17 year old boy had climbed a ladder to place a Palestinian flag at the top of the Wall: he was imprisoned for 8 years for this simple act. The image of a woman contains a quote about how, by matching the resonant frequency of any structure, it is possible to bring that structure down without using so much force. That quote struck me because it seems that when a people are under constant pressure from a power with much greater force than they have, it becomes necessary to find paths through that force which can destabilize it using only the modest means available to them.’:

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[Parry describes the experience that resulted in the following sequence of 5 photographs:]

As I photograph the stagnant water, a boy’s voice calls: ‘Hello! Hello! Sawwer! [‘Take a photo!’].’ I can’t see him. There’s silence, then moments later, ‘Hello!’ again, this time from under the door in the Wall. He peeks underneath, smiling. ‘Ismi Mohammad’ [‘My name is Mohammad’] he says. ‘Ana William,’ I reply. Then he’s off again. A moment later: ‘William!’ he calls. He comes through the huge storm drains. ‘Come!’ he beckons. The smell is revolting. His playground is this tunnel filled with fetid sewage.

The apartment buildings here – once convenient and inexpensive locations for commuting into Jerusalem – are largely empty. A man whose house is directly on the other side of this Wall shows me where the sewage floods his home during storms. His grape vines create a canopy of shade, but they cannot eat the grapes because they are contaminated.

Storm drains like these have served as a passage for Palestinians to get round the Wall to enter Jerusalem to earn money, pray or visit family. All around the Wall are improvised ladders made out of rope, fence, discarded pallets – whatever their ingenuity can put to use.: