A tour guide-turned-photographer’s view of Israeli sites and scenes
There’s a spectrum of hues and views in “From The Beginning,” a debut photography exhibit from newcomer Moshe Gold at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
The 14-photograph exhibit that opened June 3 and runs through June 23 stems from the tour guide’s collection of photos taken in nature throughout Israel, mostly in the last year when he had the time to hike even more than usual.
The photographs portray sites in Israel, from the Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea to the cliffs of Acre, a famed lone tree in the Ruchama Badlands in the south and the starry skies of Mitzpe Ramon.
Each photo is centered by a focal point, whether it’s a man sitting in a chair on the Sea of Galilee, a fantastical spiderweb caught with raindrops, or surfers catching some waves in the Mediterranean Sea.
“Moments don’t just happen, you have to look for them sometimes,” said Gold. “Every photo is a moment, it’s a story.”
There are photos layered by light, taken at different times of the day, said Gold. While all the photos were taken in Israel, they encompass moments that not everyone necessarily gets to see.
“I look at the interactions,” he said. “It’s boring for me to just look at the nature, I love seeing what happens around a particular spot.”
So there are photographs where the image is shaded by fog rolling in at sunrise, contains contrasts of green fields with blue skies, or offers a drone’s eye view of the sea with an emerald green hue.
“You go home and discover this treasure when you look at the photo afterwards,” said Gold.
There’s something particularly fitting about the combination of being a tour guide and photographer, said Gold, although he doesn’t generally photograph anything while guiding a group.
“I’ve been hiking my whole life,” said Gold, a certified Tourism Ministry guide. “But I’ve always had a camera in my hands.”
He never planned on exhibiting his photos, but the last year and a half of the pandemic canceled all of his work, and unexpectedly offered opportunities that he hadn’t anticipated.
Gold and his wife, Vered Noa Lipschitz Gold, married during the coronavirus, and she pushed him to work on compiling the exhibit.
There have been other changes this year, including Gold’s Zoom tours and photography tours in which he offers tours of Jerusalem’s Old City for families celebrating their events and photographs them en route.
Fittingly, the exhibit was named to mark the last year and a half in Gold’s life, when he had to start from scratch — in his work, his professional life and with his photography.