© Micha Bar Am/Magnum Photos
- Father Neophitus, Santa Katarina Monestery, Sinai
- from the portfolio Micha Bar-Am
Sheet: 15 15/16 × 19 15/16 in. (40.5 × 50.6 cm)
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Bar-Am is a working photojournalist,
an artist who regularly exhibits his work in museums and commercial galleries,
and the advisor on photography to the Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel. He has
published photographic books on the Yom Kippur War, the Sinai, and the Israeli
Air Force. In his role as a photojournalist in Israel during the past thirty years,
Bar-Am has become intimately acquainted with the daily events and everyday
people of the Jewish state. This continuing interest in humanity has led to a
series of photographs focusing on Jewish settlements outside Israel and on
specific communities within its borders.
This photograph is
part of a portfolio and is accompanied by the following description: “It was
three or four A.M. I'd spent the night helping Father Neophitus bake bread. In
the morning it would be given to the neighboring Bedouins in fulfillment of a
bargain struck centuries ago whereby the monks provided bread in return for a
guarantee of their safety. When we finished, he invited me to his austere cell
for a glass of ouzo. He rolled himself a cigarette and leaned exhausted upon
his hand. ‘Hold it,’ I said and took this
picture by the dim light of the kerosene lamp. He looked timelessly biblical,
like one of the prophets or maybe even Moses himself. Who knows what brought
him to this desert?”
ProvenanceKaye Marvins Photography, Inc., Houston; given to MFAH, 1986.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
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