Bezalel Ben-Chaim | בצלאל בן-חיים
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Destiny hills (Gva'ot Goral)
The monument to the Negev Brigade, designed by Danny Karavan, is located northeast of the city of Beer-Sheva, at the foothills of the area called Gva'ot Goral - which translates into Hills of Destiny. As a native of Be'er Sheva, I visited it countless times - it was inaugurated in 1968, about a year after I was born - and to this day I come there every few weeks - sometimes just for a visit of two or three hours, and sometimes I stay there a whole night, from sunset to sunrise.
As the years pass and the number of wars that must be commemorated increases, the monument loses its original meaning - commemorating the defenders of the Negev and documenting the battles of the War of Independence - and it becomes a commemoration site for itself. A commemorative site for another time, a commemorative site for memories that disappear. An anchor whose very presence draws attention to everything that is no longer here. The monument that I document in the photographs is not a place, but rather a state of mind, it is a time machine made of concrete that crashed on a hill 55 years ago.
In the "Hills of Fate" I return and photographing at the same points where my father stood when he photographed me, my older brother and my mother (on the back of the photos I found in the family album the date is written: October, 1969). I photograph the brutalist castings that hold the sunlight, the engraved words that have lost all meaning, the light pollution that comes from the direction of Beer Sheva at night.

















