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ISRAËL BALADIA (2012) / WEST BANK RAWABI (2013)

As far back as the 1970s Ad van Denderen was following developments in the relation between the Israelis and Palestinians from close up. In the course of time he has watched the two peoples grow farther away from each other.

In 2012 Van Denderen photographed Baladia City, the National Urban Training Center of the Israeli army. In this mock city soldiers are trained to capture Palestinian cities in the shortest time possible. In contrast Van Denderen in his follow-up series turns his camera on Rawabi, a new city under construction where about 40,000 Palestinian families will live. Rawabi is rising about ten kilometres north of Ramallah, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and in terms of technology and infrastructure will fully geared to the demands of life today.

For his contribution to The Sequel Van Denderen has combined the two series, and supplements them with historic archive images and his own work from the periods 1990-1995 and 2002-2003. The result is a nuanced but urgent recapitulation of the ever intensifying conflict on the West Bank of the Jordan, with special attention for the role of architecture.

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