Desert Bloom

Desert Bloom is the second project in The Erasure Trilogy

Tracing the consequences of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s dream of settling the Negev and making the “desert bloom,” the aerial photographs that comprise Fazal Sheikh’s Desert Bloom project reveal the many forces and actions that have blossomed to displace and erase the Bedouins who have lived in the desert for generations. They expose the transformation of the landscape caused by mining, military training camps, the clearance and appropriation of the desert by reforestation, the enforced evacuation and demolition of “unrecognized” Bedouin villages and the expansion of Israeli settlements. What becomes clear is the degree to which the alteration and devastation of the Negev has gone hand-in-hand with violence against the Bedouins. In studying these photographs, the desert comes to us as a kind of archive of what has happened on its shifting surfaces over time; what is hidden and sealed within its dunes, and the efforts to erase the traces of its long and often violent history.