In 1996 Kuper made an important step toward a series of works with political and critical dimensions at its center. He paired up with Gilad Ophir, left the studio for work based mainly in the public space, and together with Ophir created the series Necropolis. He abandoned “manipulated photography” for direct photography, sharp and untouched, of buildings and active and abandoned military bases. The small plastic throwaway cameras were dropped and exchanged for medium format cameras, that used 6X6 cm. film, allowing high quality photography and prints.

Kuper’s move from a private, studio environment to a public, outdoor environment included poignant messages about the Israeli reality. With Necropolis – meaning “City of the Dead,” (for example burial sites in the suburbs of past civilizations, such as Egypt and Rome) – Kuper points out the Israeli “Cities of the Dead”: abandoned military structures, or buildings and complexes built to military specifications, for exercises in urban warfare yet situated in isolated and distant locations. These structures become quasi-monuments of Israeli history; in the past they were monuments to heroism, today they are neglected, miserable and ugly. Firing ranges empty of people and activity; abandoned camps; erect and isolated watch towers; buildings riddled with bullet holes used to practice urban warfare; radars; concrete surfaces (left both by the British army during the Mandate and the I.D.F.), that in the past had tin buildings, huts and tents placed on them, and now covered by the desert sand; military structures, mainly built of asbestos (by the I.D.F.); and military structures of stone and concrete (of the Syrian and Jordanian armies) – all these look like ghost towns, corpses, shadows of a previous reality, vanishing (and memory) zones of forgotten places. All these places are reminiscent of archeological sites, even though some of them are active sites, especially those intended for military exercises of urban warfare, photographed when there is no activity, so they seem abandoned and neglected. To an extent they are suggestive of Bunker Archeology by Paul Virilio who during the years 1957–65 investigated defense plans and photographed bunkers and fortification systems set up along the French Atlantic coast during World War II. Virilio’s investigation dealt with the military sphere in Europe and its relation to the civilian sphere. An important part of his research and documentation was photographs of the bunkers and fortification systems.4 The military bunkers in Virilio’s documentation seem to be full of glory and splendor, while the military camps and installations photographed by Kuper are expressly unheroic sites, and we are used to passing them by without acknowledging their existence. These structures and installations, hollow, decayed, riddled with bullets, deserted, are used by Kuper in his work dealing with the Israeli militarism that has penetrated many parts of Israeli society in a way seen natural by most Israelis.

In his work he mainly relates to the expropriation of spaces and landscapes, of their universal and pastoral value, to military needs and an aggressive military presence. A glorious landscape expropriated for military needs, destroyed by the military’s activities and turned into an alienated, neglected and desolate place. The anti-aesthetic of military camps is accentuated by their being turned into ghost towns, as if nature itself has expelled them from within. The camps, that in the past broadcast strength, seem to be a science fiction film set forgotten in the desert. It isn’t surprising that the closed circle, with no opening, symbolizing the complete and the absolute, the center, occurs in different forms throughout the Necropolis series: the circle of an abandoned army post, where nothing grows within, that seems to sketch itself in the heart of the virgin field – silent witness to the structure placed there in the past, or to activity held in the field in the past that prevents the growth of wild grasses inside the circle; or a ring encompassing a building, used for practicing urban warfare, and more. The circle that symbolizes perfection, the total, unity – is in many ways the circle of the Israeli collective that Kuper tries to examine to see if it has been breached.

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Dr. Rona Sela

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