How does one photograph a land and a country that’s often reduced to distorting images? Federico Busonero, who made three photographic excursions into Palestine in 2008-09, offers one of the definitive photography collections of contemporary Palestine in The Land That Remains. Busonero does not aim his lens at Israeli checkpoints or the infamous separation barrier. An ignorant reader might not discern that there is a military occupation in Palestine from his photographs. Critics might charge that Busonero, a sympathizer with the Palestinian struggle, has done a disservice to that cause by omitting the brutal intrusion of the occupation. But, Palestine is more than the occupation, and the real disservice to the Palestinian people would be to reduce their existence to that sad state of affairs. What Busonero’s photographs vividly convey is that despite Israel’s efforts to dominate the landscape and turn the Palestinians into mere incidental props on their land, the Palestinian existence transcends Israeli occupation. In the mosques and churches, villages and towns, the Palestinians people appear not in the shadow — literally and figuratively — of Israeli occupation but as permanent beings embedded in the soil. Their daily lives – from traveling to work or attending to their herd – appear to be indifferent to the surrounding open-air prison; it is the Palestinian fellahin that Busonero captures, “the essential strain of the basic primitive, wailing humanity,” who will outlast all ephemeral rulers. The narrative arc running through Busonero’s photographs is that Palestine is an antique land, as exhibited in many of the photographs of ancient ruins. This land has known many conquerors, but through it all the Palestinian people go on with their lives in the land that remains. The only thing circumstantial and incidental is the Israeli walls and checkpoints deforming the land, and Busonero is only interested in capturing the eternal landscape and its people
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