2007 Runner-up
Shai Kremer—Poisoned Landscape

Editorial Statement
“If the accumulation of ruins and military remnants turns out to be a defining trait of the Israeli landscape, what to think of the society that grows out of it?” asks Shai Kremer.

Kremer’s photographs of the landscape of Israel are rigorously beautiful, and inevitably allegorical. Working on this project for seven years, Kremer’s goal is to make formal compositions in which the viewer can contemplate the scars of military action—be they subtle or traumatic—on an embattled land. The formal beauty of Kremer’s composition is a palliative, an effort to give us some honey on the spoon, along with his harder-to-swallow message regarding the ways in which violence poisons a region. —JL

Artist’s Bio
Shai Kremer was born in Israel in 1974. He received his BA at Camera Obscura School of the Arts in Tel Aviv, and went on to get his MFA in 2005 at the School of Visual Arts, New York. The entire Infected Landscape series can be viewed at www.shaikremer.com.