A project commissioned for the book Jerusalem - City of Collision. It weaves a path from Bethlehem through a checkpoint into an Israeli settlement; a Palestinian village, the commercial centre of East Jerusalem; the Old City; an orthodox Jewish area; a Palestinian refugee camp, another Israeli settlement; and finally to the checkpoint into Ramallah. The route becomes the structure for a photo-story looking at the relation between architecture, social space and political conflict. In print, the photo-essay forms a map to help navigate the content of the book.
Since the occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem in 1967, all processes of urban change have been deeply influenced by the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. One of the world’s most historic cultural thresholds has been transformed into a frontier city characterised by destructive dualities and opposites, where cultures and mentalities collide in an unprecedented intensity. Following intense Israeli construction in the annexed East after 1967, the single demarcation line (border) that had divided the city since 1948 has been gradually replaced by a matrix of isolated insular urban realities contained by physical and mental frontiers. Architecture and urban planning have become instruments in the struggle for territorial and demographic control. - Philipp Misselwitz, co-editor of Jerusalem - City of Collision (Birkhauser, 2006)
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