Chapter 11
“Days of Sun, Playing, and Dreams”
Innocence, loss, and nostalgia in photography books of children in the kibbutz
After a brief overview of children’s photography books in Israel, this chapter focuses on photobooks that were shot in
the kibbutzim. Created mostly by local photographers with an insider’s gaze, these books embody the vision of childhood in a rural,
parentless environment protected from the fate of the Oedipal fall and the perils of a changing society. While promoting the vision of
the kibbutz by documenting children’s everyday life, some of these books tap into the loss and deprivation in the realized utopia of
the kibbutz. The three case studies discussed in the chapter, published between 1961–1968, present various interactions between
photographer and writer, images and words, that yielded intricate messages. An analysis of them shows how this variant of the
photobook exploited the qualities of the medium and the genre, which combine realism and nostalgia, in order to reveal the underlying
tensions in the kibbutz’s vision and way of life.
Article outline
- Introduction and overview: Children’s photobooks in Israel
- Realism and nostalgia in photobooks and photography
- The kibbutz’s photobooks
- A reading of three kibbutz photobooks
- “Mommy does not answer” – A family pastoral in Eti and
Na’ama
- “A bad deed”: Into the wild in A Journey to the Land of
Rain
- “And I was that girl” – Lilach of Kibbutz Ilanot and the story of the photographed child
- Conclusion
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Acknowledgments
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Notes
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References