I was asked a few years ago how I would define my photography. I never thought of myself as a photographer until that moment, but without even thinking I answered “framed landscapes”.

I have been taking photographs since I was a very young boy. I always played around with my brother's Nikon and used to burn half the film before I got a good result. I decided to learn it more in depth, so I sat down and read every manual I could get my hands on and tried all sorts of things until I got my first photograph the way I wanted it.

During my military service years I took my camera everywhere I could and photographed the desert and the empty plains I passed through, and this is where I discovered my passion for landscape photography. Most of these photographs got lost or destroyed, but I was able to find a few that I scanned in low-res format. I wanted to incorporate some of them in this book as an anecdote, and also as a reference to where I started my journey, but after testing the layout, I decided it does not fit the setup and left them out for a future project.

I discovered that the photographed landscape itself is not enough though - it must have a meaning within the overall frame of the photograph, or else it gets lost within itself, as it has no story to tell and nothing to frame it as a whole. I discovered that in order to impose a meaning, even the grandest landscape must have a direction to take, a road to follow and it must allow the viewer to transcend beyond the photograph itself and be drawn into its deepest hidden meaning. Like a poem.

This is what I attempt with my work.

I was born and raised in Tel-Aviv of the 1970's, and experienced some of the kibbutz life style for a period as well. I joined the IDF in 1990 and served in a combat unit for almost 4 years. After my military service was over I have traveled extensively throughout Israel, trying to cover as much of it as I could, as it is until now my favorite place in the world for hiking and site-seeing as it is never dull and so intensely condensed. I finished my degree in English Literature from Tel Aviv University in 2000 and began my Masters' studies the same year. I decided to leave school late in 2002 as I wanted to concentrate more on my career and art. I traveled throughout Europe and parts of the North American east coast in the years to follow and tried to photograph as much as I could. My experience as a photographer though was never complete without my poetry though, as I began writing long before I decided to become a photographer.

I try to approach my photographic work in the same manner that I approach my writing. For me it is the same type of creative process. I try not to shot out of the hip, as I would not write the first literary thought that comes into my mind. Still - at times, you cannot plan a photograph as it is a matter of seconds and the moment you saw is gone forever (as with a poem that might come up in your mind and if you do not write it down now it is never the same when you think of it again). I do not see this as being a "snapping tourist", but as a Carpe Diem existence. You must be ready for anything at any time.

This is my motto, and this is the way I live my life.