Runways

"Runways" addresses disappearance and death in sites of personal loss in Israel's landscape. These are images of ambivalent beauty, so close to both life and death. In these photographs, which she took with medium-format cameras, the photographer Naomi Leshem tells stories of disappearance and death. A road in the Arabah Desert where a young woman died in a motor-cycle accident. A place in the Negev Desert where, despite a twelve-hour trip by car, parents drive several times a year to mourn the loss of their son. Or the Sea of Galilee, where a military pilot lost control of his plane and crashed at top speed into the water's peaceful, deep blue surface. Leshem searched for such sites of disappearance and death. Like memento mori, they are symbols in the midst of life and its always incomplete transience.