Center

Santa Fe Prize for Photography

Finalist
Rachel Papo, Brooklyn, NY,

Serial No. 3817131 (www.SerialNo3817131.com)
The life of an eighteen-year-old girl in Israel is interrupted when she is plucked out of her environment at an age when sexual, educational, and family values are at their highest exploration point. She is then placed in a rigorous institution, where individuality becomes a secondary matter, making room for nationalism. “I solemnly swear…to devote all of my strength and to sacrifice my life to protect the land and the liberty of Israel,” repeats the newly recruited soldier during her swearing-in ceremony. She enters the two-year period in which she will change from a girl to a woman, a teenager to an adult, all under a militaristic, masculine environment, and in the confines of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict.

I decided to portray female soldiers in Israel during their mandatory military service as a way for me to revisit my own experience. I served as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force between 1988-1990. It was a period marked by continuous depression and extreme loneliness, and at the time I was too young to understand these emotions. Through a series of images showing female soldiers in army bases and outside, individually or in groups, I attempt to reveal a facet of this experience that is generally overlooked by the global community.

Rather than portraying the soldier as heroic, confident, or proud, my images disclose a complexity of emotions. The soldier is often caught in a transient moment of self-reflection, uncertainty, a break from her daily reality, as if questioning her own identity and state of contradiction. She is a soldier in uniform but at the same time she is a teenage girl who is trying to negotiate between these two extreme dimensions. She is in an army base surrounded by hundreds like her, but underneath the uniform there is an individual that wishes to be noticed.

I realized that although I was in a vulnerable emotional state during my service and thought of ways out of it, there was a certain level of acceptance involved. The girls I encountered were so immersed in this lifestyle, in their new reality, and completely divorced from the outside world. How could I explain to them that what they are doing means nothing in the outside world, yet will affect them for the rest of their lives? They have given up who they are for now; they have put their dreams on hold; their lives for the next two years have become a wistful compromise.

These thoughts and feelings constitute the frame of this body of work, and the core impulse for my decision to go back. With this project I wish to seek answers to matters that were left unresolved, and to shed some light on a side of the Israeli Army that is less obvious and predictable and more vulnerable than the way it is commonly portrayed.

All images are 20x24 inch and 30x40 inch C-Prints

Soldier Standing in Hallway
Hatzeva Army Base, Israel, 2004

Soldier on her cell phone during break from basic training
Shaare Avraham Training Camp, Israel, 2004

Two soldiers on break from basic training
Shaare Avraham Training Camp, Israel, 2004

Religious soldiers praying after lunch during first shooting practice Nitzanim Range, Israel, 2005

A newly recruited soldier stands guard during first shooting practice Nitzanim Range, Israel, 2005

Dana and Naomi hanging out in Dana’s room
Kibbutz Mishmar Ha Yarden, Israel, 2005

Soldier resting during instructions on first hand grenade throwing Unidentified camp, Israel, 2005

Soldier taking a break from her job as a military kiosk counter-person. Pikud Tzafon Army Base, Israel, 2004

Soldiers during morning line-up before breakfast, 6:00AM
Shaare Avraham Training Camp, Israel, 2005

Soldier carrying a stretcher in the rain
Tsaelim Training Camp, Israel, 2005

A newly recruited soldier crying before first shooting practice Nitzanim Range, Israel, 2005

Soldiers clutching bibles during their Swearing-In Ceremony
Shaare Avraham Training Camp, Israel, 2004

Soldier holding a beer outside a bar
Alenby Street, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2004

Two newly recruited soldiers patrolling camp
Tsaelim Training Camp, Israel, 2005

Girls on bus parting from family, before leaving for Tel Hashomer Induction-Centre. Haifa, Israel, 2004

Soldier on duty at watch-tower after a rain storm
Tsaelim Training Camp, Israel, 2005

Soldiers training to be cops during a meeting
Beit Lid Army Base, Israel, 2004

Soldier walking back to group after first hand grenade throwing Unidentified camp, Israel, 2005

All images © Rachel Papo