Since 2005, Israeli photographer Yuval Tebol has been exploring and observing the internal conflict in Israel, the West Bank, regions around Gaza, the Dead Sea and Jordan’s Arava desert in a series called “Land Research.” The project looks to “emphasize the psychological consequences of the conflict through staggered triptychs. “Land Research” is a private journey borne out of Tebol’s own desire to observe and study the human impact that is found in almost every area of life. It examines the boundaries of time and space, internal and external, memory and imagination, conceptual and abstract, complete and disassembled, in the regions and borders of the Land of Israel and the West Bank, and that raises and breaks down questions and problems using the complex and delicate language and tool of photography.

For the past 10 years, Israeli photographer Yuval Tebol has been exploring and observing the internal conflict in Israel, the West Bank, regions around Gaza, the Dead Sea and Jordan’s Arava desert in a series called “Land Research.” The project looks to “emphasize the psychological consequences of the conflict through staggered triptychs. “Land Research” is a private journey borne out of Tebol’s own desire to observe and study the human impact that is found in almost every area of life. It examines the boundaries of time and space, internal and external, memory and imagination, conceptual and abstract, complete and disassembled, in the regions and borders of the Land of Israel and the West Bank, and that raises and breaks down questions and problems using the complex and delicate language and tool of photography.

Israeli photographer and lecturer Yuval Tebol travelled to Greece in August 2015. Working with a medium format camera and Black and White film, Tebol searched to respond to the surge of refugees fleeing the war in Syria. Following traces, the marked and overwhelmed landscape, he constructed a series of Black and white triptychs. Tebol photographed the sea. The stillness of its waters. Transforming them into a symbol of what must be overcome on the road towards an imagined better future. A milestone in the journey of hundreds of thousands, in a story of crisis, desperation, in a journey of lost hopes. It is also home to those who live on its shores. Dawn came for those who call this place their home, for those who no longer have a home. This is their home. For today, tomorrow. Until there is a new home. Tebol photographs question marks. Who are the people who journeyed here, what have they left behind. What is this place they have come to. What did they flee. Where did they go. We are not the passive observer. We are called into action, not only in the relationship between photographer and viewer. But as humans. Sofie Berzon MacKie, Curator

Observation of the urban space and an attempt to understand the aesthetics and the factors that operate on this space, on the aesthetic, topographical, social, and political levels.

Lodged between a sewage plant and a busy motorway connecting Vienna’s city centre to the airport, 2000-odd people lived in Macondo, one of Austria’s oldest refugee settlements. Still not many people know about its existence. It was founded more than 50 years ago. Today, 2000 women, men and children from 22 different nations live here. This place represents the history of escapism to Austria. Stateapproved refugees from different conflict regions around the world, found a shelter in the settlement behind the yellow wall and military walls. A so called ghetto - Macondo is run-down, with rubbish and trolley carts piled on the grass and a small playground overcome with weeds.

During 2010, Israel was in turmoil when a wave of social awakening and protests filled the streets. Tebol in response launched his "Face Project"- an award winning series of portraits (Local Testimony, series of the year, 2011, exhibited at Eretz Israel Museum), photographed between 2010-2015 and depicting a cross section of Israel's society. The photographs were taken with the subjects consent, crossing into their territory physically as well as emotionally, using natural window light and black canvas as a background. The photographed subjects face us, surrendering themselves to our gaze. In a way the series is a natural extension of Tebol's "Land research", using the same typological approach, while shifting the camera from the landscape to the human material assembling Israel's society. The series signals a typology recalling the work of August Sander. Tebol's portraits, however, do not attempt to document social classification, although they draw on a highly heterogenic population. They emphasize sameness in terms of the human experience, simultaneously disclosing the uniqueness of a single life. Struggling with photography as art versus documentation Tebol ignores biographic information, ethics or political issues. The people become faces gathered under a uniform title, lacking names, interpretation or identification other than the highlighted features of the face. His disregard of the anecdotic turns the photographed people into storytellers. The camera is a listener. Berger will address that feeling in a photograph as "the river explaining itself".