Rivka Gilad has been a photographer for several decades. She is a native of Jerusalem, has lived in the Jordan Valley, and resides today in Ghinaton. Her parents emigrated to Israel from Turkey, and her mother tongue is Ladino. The Hebrew language was also spoken at her house.

The exhibition photographs were selected from an archive built over two decades, ranging from documentary to staged, portrait (young and old), objects, nature, and family to interior photography. The multi-category archive is characterized by dynamism and still continues to grow. It is bursting with a variety of expressions. It holds images, moments, and events, memories and forgetfulness, death and life.

The title of the exhibition, La Historia De Un Amor, testifies to motion: toward love, following love, back to love. It is a journey. The images exist on a track: from Jerusalem to the forest, from the mother tongue, Ladino, to Hebrew. The exhibition seeks to describe a realm of travel and memory, a recollection of the journey.
Rivka says: “I photograph as I speak, as I remember.” Another series of photographs and text on postcards accompanies the wall-mounted images, like an additional layer or a parallel journey. Visitors are encouraged to take the postcards with them. Taken forty years ago and found by the photographer before the exhibition, this series echoes a few isolated moments that have continued to resonate in her work over the years.
According to her, “The photographs were made forty years ago, in a morning of wonder, taken from the same window. I was in a hotel (which no longer exists) opposite Gay Ben Hinom; I woke up at 4

am and just took more and more pictures. Jerusalem was beautiful, it was quiet, and the light was lovely. I had an old analogue camera… Some months before the exhibition I happened on these photographs, and they seemed different. Jerusalem and I were as one... At the time, I didn’t realize it, but I’d made a double exposure, probably so I could see, see, and understand. I was in my thirties then, seeing but not yet understanding… The ominous dreams returned; I’m running in the forest and something pursues me. The daily life was overloaded, and the dreams lived in me.”

Rivka attests that she made some of her works according to dreams: dreams of pursuit, getting lost in various places, and the inability to find the way home. This motif has appeared repeatedly in her work over the years. “My photography began with the wish to record what I had experienced in dreams, to understand through the photographs those visions and sensations, and to try to understand why I cannot find my home; what does this getting lost mean? The nature and the objects in the photographs are images that exist in my body. As I photograph, I imagine and see inner spaces in the thick of the forest, homes, rooms, places of hiding and shelter. Outlines, recognizable as figures, appear within the darkness and amongst the mists. Fear has set me on the path to photography; for me, it is a dialogue with myself and an expression of something childlike and primal within me. The sculptures and objects I photograph, as well as the portraits, all bear a burden of pain for the goodness and beauty that have been ruined, and for what has passed. This pain is about a lack. In the works displayed here, I attempt to construct sequence and space, a way through me and by me.
My way opens up before me – when I dream and search for the images and sensations I have experienced in the dream in my surroundings.”

It seems that some of Rivka’s photographs come from within an introspective motion, focusing on looking inward. The moment of making the photograph is multifaceted, more than just capturing an instant in time and place. Rivka attempts to capture the relationship between the outer and inner worlds as she observes the materials she has photographed and contemplates the extent of their fit and correlation. Thus, her photographs attempt to tell a story that binds together lights, shadows, and bodies, as they encounter her soul and internal world. These are symbolic/metaphoric photographs that combine technical savvy with poetic sensitivity, enfolding an experience of bringing together inner and outer vistas.

“Ever since I can remember – love has waited.” It is not just the title of the exhibition and the book Rivka published in 2025, which contains her photographs and writings. “Love Has Waited” also serves as a motto for her work process. She recalls the love that awaits her, her affinity to love. Love is the action that underpins the act of photography: life as action, action as life. They exist in the realm of anticipation between the love that awaits and the expectation of being loved. The love in the photographs is then a life journey: from birth to death, from womb to womb; a dialogue between renewal and death. The photographs are full of compassion, pity, solace, and healing, enabling the construction of a personal mythology that begins and ends with love.