Shabtai Pinchevsky

Info

I'm a photographer and digital media artist whose practice examines the politics of image-making in contested geographies, particularly Israel/Palestine. I work across 3D modeling, mapping, drone photography, and archival research to examine photography's entanglements with colonial and territorial politics. I'm an Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons School of Design, The New School.

My practice emerges from a deep personal reckoning.

I hold a strong affinity for Israel—one that is a source of much shame.

What concerns me, what drives my practice, is how deeply the logics of that place—settler colonialism, Jewish supremacy—shapes how I see and move through the world.

For me, Anti-Zionism is not a fixed position but a trajectory, something I work towards rather than claim to fully inhabit. This ongoing project defines my most immediate audience: those who share that trajectory, those who must reckon with Zionist logics too.

While I recognize the importance and impact of direct action against Israeli cultural institutions, I see my role in working to mobilize shame from within. I won't accept direct state funding, but I feel compelled to remain in conversation with that place and those who must reckon with it, even as each opportunity involves its own shame.

I don't know what I'll decide the next time an opportunity arises, but I work to keep my voice and trajectory clear and sharp, creating work that will, I hope, participate in the inevitable work of dismantling Zionism in Israel/Palestine.

January 2026