Birds of Israel

photo series | 2016-2022

Situated at the crossroads of Eurasia and Africa, Israel lies along one of the world’s most significant migratory bird routes. Each year, an estimated 500 million birds pass through its skies — storks, cranes, pelicans flying in great flocks, smaller species weaving through parks and gardens, and enigmatic wanderers like vultures, whose movements defy seasonal patterns and scientific explanation.

This vast aerial migration intersects not only with the natural landscape but also with the boundaries of human activity. In some cases, it poses a direct threat: collisions between birds and military aircraft have proven fatal. In response, Israeli ornithologists have developed sophisticated systems to predict the shifting patterns of bird movement — an attempt to map the dynamics of a space shaped not by borders, but by instinct and sky.

This series draws from photographs taken in Israel: of birds in flight and in captivity, of landscapes and scientific collections housed in museums. Through montages, collages, and installations, these images are recomposed to explore the friction — and sometimes fragile harmony — between two kinds of space: one governed by nature, the other by human definition, whether political, cultural, or technological.

At the heart of the work is a meditation on our desire to understand and contain what ultimately resists our frameworks. The images shift and displace the viewer’s sense of visual space, reflecting the paradox of a world where separate systems — natural and constructed — inevitably converge.

(with kind permission of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History / Tel Aviv University for the use of their bird specimens)