The exhibition presents the transforming self-image of an emergent nation. To a foreign eye, this image becomes a mirror reflection. The exhibition captures the two-sided view  born from the encounter between photo albums that are issued for internal use and offer an inner perspective, the kind of image fellow countrymen create for themselves, and photo albums and guidebooks created for tourists, who are temporary visitors ("what ought to be seen").

Local photo albums are comprised of collective memories: they are evidence of “what has happened”, “how we were". For new immigrants and those who had to abandon their homes, they substitute the family album left behind, lost in the upheavals of history. They document different stages in the life of the young State, describing the elements that make it: population and boundaries, actions and values. They become part of the family bookshelf.

Tourist guidebooks are temporary and short-lived. They are used over a limited span of time and space, and must be updated periodically. They are closely associated with the culture they spring from and reflect trends in the perception of the "other" and in the transmission of the exotic aspects of the concept "there" to tourists. They orient and direct the tourists' gaze, while imbuing their impressions with historical and cultural content.

Israel's photo albums and guidebooks have never been regarded as formal History, even though some of them have been used for propaganda purposes. However, put together, they tell stories revealing that the stretch of land about to be visited is multifaceted and perceived differently by diverse audiences. The Holy Land, Terra Santa, Promised Land, Israel, Palestine, My beloved country, homeland ... These are but a few of the many designations that relate to this geographical, cultural, historical and political unit, whose time and space boundaries are determined by the target audience and are more than just the outcome of a political division. Is it 20,000 square kilometers or 25,000 square kilometers? Seventy years, a hundred years or two thousand years?

The spans of time and space presented in albums and guidebooks represent both conflict and desire. Combats, population clashes, momentous events in the life of the nation and its people, and a desire to be perceived favorably by future generations, to imbue the place visited with a positive, sometimes mystical meaning (as in the unique case of Jerusalem, a capital that is spiritual as well as historical).

The visual imagery repeats itself. The same moving photos of illegal immigrants in a boat or settlers in tents, primeval nature, and portraits. The same sites, photographed from different angles, occasionally tell a new and different story. Quite often, significant collective stories merge with personal accounts of travelers and immigrants, who have had the courage to describe their experiences in travel diaries and guidebooks.

The exhibition does not focus on individual images, but puts the photographs in context. The images appearing in albums and guidebooks derive their meaning from the texts that surround them. A chronological examination of the albums reveals the programmatic language of the early years of statehood, when the text dictated its conclusions to the viewer. The language in later albums is generally descriptive, and leaves some room for the viewer's interpretation. Over the years, documentation becomes nostalgic, and images that had previously appeared to be part of a contemporary story in pictures are no longer an act of documentation but of remembrance.

The exhibition engages in the material aspects of an album or a guide: the way to hold it, the way to read it. Over the preparations for the exhibition, albums and guidebooks were placed side by side for the first time. Opening the volumes next to each other created unexpected encounters, some of which pointed to new stories. The description of the various posters was not simple either. Attempts at neutral descriptions were doomed to fail. The exhibition should therefore be regarded as a large album, a collage of albums and tourist guidebooks, manifesting a variety of attitudes and visual stratification. The respective qualities of photography and text, the extent of State involvement and private production, and the diversity of target audiences reveal together an astonishingly multifaceted nature of Israel.

(Text by Galia Yanoshevsky)