Shabtai Pinchevsky

Info

I’m a photographer and digital media artist working at the intersection of architecture, archives, technology, and politics. In my works, I use 3D modeling, mapping, internet-based tools, and more to examine archival photographic materials and their relations to geographies of conflict and displacement, especially in Israel / Palestine. My practice is engaged with issues of social justice and human rights, and their application in art and media

I hold a strong affinity for Israel, one that is a source of much shame. It finds its way into every aspect of life - from relationships to those still there, to the language of my thoughts - everything is infected.

Some say: ‘I do not represent that country/government'. My concern is with how deeply the logics of that place—settler colonialism, the ethnostate—guide my own intuition. This is mine to reckon with, and perhaps it's what my practice is really about.

I'm an Anti-Zionist, in that I hope for a future where Palestine is free from ethno-nationalism, where people of all nations and ethnicities live equally and securely, in whatever political configurations that work.

But more deeply, for myself, Anti-Zionism is not a position but a trajectory. It is something I'm working towards, not a stand that I can yet claim to fully inhabit. That is my project, at large. For better or worse, that project also defines my most immediate and important audience—those who share that trajectory with me, those who wish, or must, (now, or in the future) reckon with the logics of Zionism.

I appreciate anyone who takes direct action—boycott, divestment, and sanctions against the State of Israel and its institutions and enablers, and I recognize how impactful those actions can be. And yet, as a person with an affinity to that place, I see my role differently.

In the inevitable future of Palestine, people will have to talk with one another in the long process of reckoning. While Anti-Zionism is advocated worldwide, it is in the Jewish population of Palestine, that Anti-Zionism will be practiced. It's within that future that I want my voice to exist. These are the conversations that I wish my work will participate in.

This is not an absolute position, but something I keep arguing with myself on, whenever an opportunity to present my work arises. I don't know what I'll do next time, but I always try to make sure my voice and trajectory are clear and sharp.

November 2025