Prologue
		1 Public Space
		2 Culture
		3 Private Space
		4 Identity
		5 People
		6 Communication
		Epilogue

The cultural turbulence portrayed here, reflects the very shape and body of everyday reality all through the Middle East. Reading the signifiers, one gleans some of the tensions between traditional Islamic practices and contemporary 'global' culture.

As elsewhere in the world, a society with a strong sense of self is penetrated by alien influences that negate, invalidate and render irrelevant many traditional values. However, once a generation has grown up with Disney, Bruce Lee and Arnold, these phenomena cease to be alien, and instead become part of an altered and now equally 'native' culture. After all, a culture is whatever one grows up with, regardless of where the constituent parts may have originated.

Palestine finds itself on a geopolitical fault line where, on top of the territorial conflict, a battle is fought out between Islamic ways and seductive Western cultural values. Perhaps the homogenizing effect of globalization will accomplish what roadblocks and spot searches could not.

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By the logic that any habitat is a reflection of its inhabitants, each and every one of these pictures' primary purpose is to describe people, their culture and life. For a guiding, overarching principle, I found inspiration in the ideas of the artist Hundertwasser. He worked from a concept of the human surroundings as consisting of five 'skins', starting with the epidermis and moving outwards through clothing, housing, the social environment, towards ecology. I have loosely employed some of these principles.

Bee Flowers