torn down and erected elsewhere, yet
the scars are going to stay there.
I thought: “Josef, if you do not photograph
this, you will make a great mistake, because
this is actually an extreme case of ruining
the landscape.”Did you get emotionally involved when
shooting the wall and landscapes?
I desperately tried to make the [emotional]
cut with Israel which, of course, I didn’t
succeed [in doing]. I must say that I don’t at all
follow what’s happening in the Czech Republic,
but I observe very closely what’s happening in
Israel. So, unfortunately, I didn’t succeed to
cut it completely. That’s what I was afraid of.
Partly it was the reason, in the beginning,that I didn’t want to get emotionally involved.
I knew that if I started to do some work in
that place I would get emotionally involved.How did you know that?
Because I knew that there were a lot of
problems there, and if I start to work
in a country where there are problems,
these problems will become part of
my problems. That’s how I work.In one scene in the film, a soldier at the
Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah is
ordering you, though loudspeakers, to
move away from a fence when taking
pictures... Did you notice that, or were
you concentrating so much on taking
pictures that you didn’t care?
I didn’t care. I knew that I needed to take that
picture no matter what was going on. Perhaps,
if he [the soldier] had started to shoot, I would
have left. It’s a similar situation to 1968,
for example... people sometimes tell me that
in I was courageous then. But I don’t think“ I needed to take that picture no matter
what was going on. Perhaps, if he had
started to shoot, I would have left”
Above: Josef Koudelka near Nablus136 DIGITAL CAMERA^ MARCH 2020 http://www.digitalcameraworld.comGi
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