Exterritories explores the liminal space between nature and imagination, history and emotion, the earthly and the sublime. Through evocative black-and-white photographs that highlight the mystery and timelessness of the forest, Bar-Joseph creates an alternative universe that recalls Victorian romantic imagery, the traditions of classical Arcadia, and scenes reminiscent of the dark fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. The photographed landscapes often appear to be part of a distant European fantasy, yet they were captured in Northern Israel, within artificial forests planted by human hands.

The images blur the boundaries between a mythical European woodland and a local landscape charged with political significance. Bar-Joseph's forest emerges as an autonomous character, a space where forces of allure and unease coexist, both sublime and ominous. Much like Victorian romantic painting, the photographs focus on suspended moments that reveal a world both fragile and dreamlike, yet profoundly flawed.

The series challenges the attempt to control and design nature, transforming it into something artificial and accessible. The figures appearing in the photographs—some delicate, others mythological—evoke feelings of detachment and estrangement while maintaining a mesmerizing intimacy. This tension reveals the clash between the longing for an idealized Arcadia and the awareness of its artificiality and vulnerability. Exterritories invites viewers to reflect on the tensions between idealization and reality, between humanity and nature, and between the familiar and the unknown, offering an experience that is intense, poetic, and deeply unsettling.

The series "Elsewheres" seeks to create a sense of disorientation by disconnecting the photographed environment from historical contexts or easily identifiable events. Unlike Henri Cartier-Bresson's concept of "the decisive moment," the actual events depicted in the photographs have either not yet occurred or appear to have already ended. These are moments and settings that evoke an atmosphere and tension that are not part of a clear narrative sequence. The drama unfolds elsewhere, while the accumulated tension freezes, becoming a memory of a place that never existed or of an event that will never take place.

The result is landscapes marked by ambiguous signs of human intervention, architectural structures stripped of their usual functionality, and humans observing an engineered environment. Together, these elements contribute to a sense of alienation and an impending apocalypse.

The historian and philologist Marianne Hirsch coined the term Postmemory, the memory after the memory, in the context of the second generation of Holocaust survivors.
Hirsch defines postmemory as the memory characteristic of "the experience of those who have been shaped by narratives that preceded their birth, formed by traumatic events that cannot be fully understood or reconstructed."
According to her, postmemory is a powerful form of memory precisely because its ties to the source are not mediated by personal recollections of what was but are forged by filling gaping voids through imagination and creativity.

The series "Islands/Boundaries" explores the tension between isolation and division, examining spaces that function as both islands and boundaries. These “islands” symbolize pockets of disconnection—natural landscapes, abandoned structures, or human artifacts—while the boundaries address separation and control, including political borders. The series questions the fragility of these constructs and their role in shaping the relationship between humanity and nature.

Through a monochromatic aesthetic and precise composition, "Islands/Boundaries" evokes solitude and unease, drawing attention to the layered implications of these spaces. The isolated elements—whether a lone structure, an engineered landscape, or an untamed environment—reflect themes of exclusion, fragmentation, and the tension between nature’s indifference and humanity’s attempts to impose order. By addressing both political and conceptual boundaries, the series invites viewers to reflect on the forces shaping these divisions and their lasting impact.

In the video-stills work "If I Were, If I Could", artist Ana Priscila Rodríguez (Mexico/Netherlands), photographer-artist Ittai Bar-Joseph (Israel), and musician Gal Dahan (Israel) collaborate to create a video/sequence of images that explores life in a world dominated by pandemics and wars, transforming it into an isolated realm where life intersects with imagined dreams and nightmares.

The artists employ the recurring motif of a blindfolded wanderer to convey feelings of abandonment, aimlessness, confusion, isolation, and an inability to focus on a clear path or known future. By severing connections between landscapes and recognizable historical or identifiable events, and by blending reality and fairy tales, they construct a visual and auditory experience designed to evoke a persistent sense of uncertainty.

The chosen medium intensifies the sense of disorientation: photomontages of Rodríguez's enchanted self-portraits are combined with Bar-Joseph's precise still photographs, undergoing animation to provoke the viewer to question what they are seeing: Is it video? Is it stills? Gal Dahan's original music composition for the work further enhances this ambiguity.

The piece was created collaboratively by the artists over dozens of hours on Zoom.

View on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X3JtzqLr2m8
Ana Priscila Rodríguez: https://www.priscila.nl
Gal Dahan: https://solo.to/galdahanguitar