Wish I was ther
Roee Cohe
Curator: Yair Barack
“Being there” (Dasein) is a term coined by the philosopher Martin Heidegger to point out the basic Human experience – an existence that is always in the world, related to it, staying in it, and realizes itself from within it. Unlike objects or instruments, whose treatment is always utilitarian or external, humans exist within the contexts of meaning, belonging, and caring.
In the middle of the 19th century, the British photographer Roger Fenton was sent to document the Crimean war. After weeks of shooting, Fenton returned with many and varied photographs. One thing was missing from them – the war.
Following October 7th, 2023, and out of the concern for a conflagration on the northern front and the border with Lebanon, many communities near the border have been evacuated and became ghost towns for many months. The evacuation plan included 61,800 evacuees from 43 settlements, and was supposed to end by the summer of 2024, but as of today, many residents have not yet returned to their homes. *
One of the largest evacuated localities was Shlomi. Ro’ee Cohen, whose work is deeply rooted in photography - but sends tendril toward sculpture, video, and sound – wanted to “be there,” to find a home. The same basic imperative guided him and he followed the call and found himself in a long relationship with the empty town. For several months he left Haifa, where he lives, for Shlomi’s silent streets, where he met whoever was there, the hard core of residents who had insiste on staying, on defending their town, water the gardens, take care of their homes, the street cats, and preserve their life as they knew it.
"The northern border is the landscape of my childhood. The town of Shlomi wasn't a destination; it was a place you passed through, armed with a forged ID supplement from one of the nearby kibbutzim, to get into Banana Beach for free. Early in the war, I left quiet Haifa (at that time), where the war was reflected in the various news channels – for trips to distribute food and medicine along the border. As for many others, this was a way to escape the existential confrontation – to feel vital and help wherever possible. I encountered the first roadblock when I happened to pass through the junction leading to Shlomi."
Cohen's initial stance naturally emerged as an ethnographic viewpoint. Cohen arrived in Shlomi and started conversations with the residents. He recorded these conversations, hoping to create a broader picture from the fragments. As the encounters continue, the "being-there" evolved into "being-with" (mit-sein), and the work paths a were shaped in relation to and by these connections. One of the prominent figures in the project is Avi Revivo. Cohen met Revivo by chance while he was gathering lemons from a bounteous tree in one of the town's squares – to distribute them to acquaintances, evacuees, and soldiers serving along the border. Revivo insisted on collecting the lemons before they dropped and rotted. In a continuous action, Cohen and artist Shachar Sivan collected the fruits that had already fallen to the ground and begun to rot and put them through a process of burning to memorialize their state. Later, Cohen accompanied Revivo on one of his rounds of watering evacuees’ gardens, which he conducted throughout the war. Another significant figure in the project is Yuval Ziv Danino. Yuval has been Cohen's student when he led a photography workshop for evacuees. She, like Revivo, became a collaborator when she returned to Shlomi as an essential worker early in the war. Danino and Cohen continued to practice their photographic language throughout the locality and in meetings with the security squad.
Over the years, several archaeological digs have been conducted around Shlomi. One of them displays its past as a Byzantine-era farm situated on the ancient road to the city of Tyre. Next to the lemons arranged as a model of an infrastructure edifice, the exhibition also includes an ancient measuring tool. It is a replica of a rare archeological find unearthed in Shlomi in the 1970s, used to measure areas for taxation purposes. The five cubits long rod, which was located in the archive of the Antiquities Authority, was 3-D scanned and reconstructed. Through his sculptural grammar Cohen creates a double gaze: an archaeological investigation of Shlomi; and an archaeology of an infrastructure still in the process of becoming/
In a sculptural work that stands in the center of the exhibition space, simulating a model of an infrastructure building with a pile of burnt lemons and an iron rod – Cohen creates a dual perspective: on the one hand, an archaeological investigation of Shlomi, and on the other, an infra-archeology of aa foundation still being formed. Over the years, several excavations have been carried out in the cit, revealing Shlomi's ancient past as a Byzantine agricultural farm on the ancient road to the city of Tyre. One of the findings that captivated Cohen was a relatively rare rod for measuring land for taxation purposes, five cubits long. The rod, found in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s archive, was 3D-scan and reconstructed – a replica of it is displayed in the exhibition.
Similar to the body of work created by Fenton, Roi Cohen's exhibition does not graphically and explicitly present the war. It deals with the echoes of war, with the human element present during wartime, in one case study of lives that refuse to surrender to fate, and people who turn a place into a home.
*As of July 2025, 90% of Shlomi’s residents returned home.