Active Block: The Blocking Practice in Contemporary Israeli Fine Art Photography

This article defines and discusses the blocking practice apparent in Israeli fine art photography of the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. The blocking practice is used in landscape photography and it is essentially realized when the photographer positions his main object in the center of the composition and so close to the picture plane in a way that blocks the viewer's field of vision and hides most of the other objects in the picture. The article presents it as an active and harsh practice and divides its embodiments in four: The first associated with Israeli building culture, the second with Israeli obsession with security measures, the third with segregation in the Israeli sphere and the last which is dubbed as "The Beautiful Block". The article clearly presents this practice as the most significant formative measure in contemporary Israeli photography which sets it apart from other currents in international landscape photography.