Swirling Sands

In the beginning, there were sands, then came Theodor Herzl's book, Altneuland, and
a Utopian dream was born: a new Hebrew city to be built on the history-rich grounds of
the holy land. Only then came the houses, the streets, the gardens: initially provincial in
style, intimate but monotonous, but later as an inevitable integration of opposites and
colliding dreams. From its very inception, Tel Aviv was a city that thrived in the gaping
space between promises and their realization, between the sands and the buildings that
were to replace them.

The Tel Aviv sand box, the motionless "tabula rasa" of 1909, was, by the early 1930's,
facing a surge of construction, these were decisive days in the development of Tel Aviv,
and by the end of this critical period - marked by the death of its powerful and ardent
mayor Meir Dizengoff in 1936 - the city had completed its transformation. It had turned
from a small coastal community with high aspirations to a tumultuous metropolis with
its own status and position in the Middle East.

This "first Hebrew city" attracted an unending flow of immigrants who chose to
ignore the anti-urban propaganda of the Zionist socialist movements and to maintain
a bourgeois lifestyle in the new city, detached from superfluous ideological chains - a
free improvisation, tailored to the sunny environment, on worlds left behind, this free
initiative yielded, even if unintentionally, a unique, enviable mixture of vibrant vitality.

Ze'ev Aleksandrowicz, the son of a paper trader from Krakow and an enthusiastic
supporter of the Zionist idea, was also swept up into the commotion. Aleksandrowicz
made three initial visits to the city between the years 1932 and 1935, after which he
decided to substitute the streets of his hometown for those of Tel Aviv. In 1936 he settled
in the city, married and started a family. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fundamental
differences between the two places, he continued to be a Tel Aviv citizen for the rest of
his life.

During his preparatory visits to Palestine, Aleksandrowicz was armed with a camera - for
him, the most appropriate tool for articulating his private impressions, the photographs
he produced demonstrate his almost effortless assimilation to the teaming flow of people
in the limitless playground of the city streets. Tel Aviv was then a young city being rapidly
built before its inhabitants' eyes, and a multifaceted city, a receptacle for a large number
 of cultures, brought together in a condensed and relatively small arena. Aleksandrowicz,
an independent photographer to the core, succeeded in capturing that pluralistic free
spirit in expressive black and white contrasts, etched on film by the harsh Palestinian

Fortune was on his side: Aleksandrowicz arrived in Tel Aviv at a formative moment in the
city's history, in the prime of adolescence, at a time when its enduring characteristics were
still being molded. He appears to have truly sensed the significance of the moment and
thus documented it in hundreds of photographs, which reveal not only the crystallization
of the city but also the private preferences of the photographer. Aleksandrowicz was
attracted to the unique combination of Hebrew cultural wealth that emerged on every
corner (on notice boards and billboards, in newspaper headlines, on cinema posters)
and to the limitless informality that ruled the streets (the unkempt clothing, the short
pants, the bare feet, the pack animals). It seems he was particularly fond of exploring
the boundaries between "organized" life (the modern city houses, the paved roads) and
the world beyond them (the sand dunes, the beach, the endless sea), this is a Tel Aviv in
which the beating pulse of the main streets is shattered and swallowed by the silence of
the surrounding sands, a city in which dust constantly mars the gleaming whiteness of
its new buildings.

The Tel Aviv of Aleksandrowicz's photographs is a new city, its houses shaped by the
sun, the sea and the sand, a city whose naissance and growth turned it into a center for
unrestrained optimism, often surprising in its intensity. It is a city that possesses within it
a constant promise for change, renewed blooming, and continual ascent. Aleksandrowicz,
a passing visitor for more than a moment, immortalized the city's buildings and people
precisely when the cityscape was manifesting that restless flood of aspiration, intent, and
desire. Above all, he succeeded in melting into his photographs the unique, hope-filled
spirit that blew through the city streets at that time.

Or Aleksandrowicz
Tel Aviv, April 2009

67