The Clal Building has been through the socio-political, emotional, and PR mill over the years.
I remember the first time I clapped eyes on it, back in the mid-1970s, just a couple years after it opened. It looked so incongruous, rising like a misfit behemoth amid the scraggly old buildings that lined Jaffa Road and the area surrounding the shuk, which seemed to have been there since time immemorial.
In those days, Jerusalem gave off a villagey, if not parochial, ambiance. It felt as if the city were clinging onto its timeworn character of a place that had been squabbled over for millennia by all manner of invading forces and civilizations.
Then the Clal Building came along, ostensibly signaling the dawning of a new era. Now looking back, one might even suggest it was the harbinger of contemporary Jerusalem, as the cityscape shoots ever more skyward with dozens of office and residential tower blocks popping up, like gargantuan proverbial post-precipitation mushrooms.
It must be said, however, that it is undeniably a much-maligned edifice. Anyone who found themselves inside the cavernous structure up to, say, a decade ago would have been forgiven for thinking it was a dystopian architectural vision gone horribly wrong. The aesthetics were appalling, and there was a pall of despondency that hung over the place.
But how many of us have taken note of the fact that it was, for all intents and purposes, the country’s first shopping mall-like enterprise? That has to qualify for some degree of bragging rights.
It is, indeed, a multi-layered storied location. Perhaps one may venture to say that it is the quintessential Jerusalem building. The bad, the good, and the downright ugly coalesce and pulsate there with an obstinacy and determination to survive, and some improbably thrive, despite all the very real existential challenges and the minefields it has to keep on dodging.
The history and present state of the Clal Building
That comes across, in colorful, unmissable fashion, in the No Despair at Clal photography exhibition currently on display at the entrance of the Muslala, nonprofit community and environmental outfit on the eighth floor – and rooftop – of the weather-beaten, staunchly unwilting building.
The works were crafted by Noa Perez, a 22-year-old student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, with Julia Yablonsky applying her curatorial nous to the collaboration.
Perez may be short on years on terra firma, but she clearly has a practiced eye for aesthetics and composition and the wits and sensitivity to home in on promising subjects and depict them in a compelling and revealing manner. This is the photographer’s first solo show, but she already has a modicum of presentational experience overseas to her name.
Last year she was one of the winners of the Visibles contest, an international competition for female photographers living in conflict areas around the globe. That landed her a slot in last year’s exhibition at the Campus Condorcet site in Paris.
“I sent in some pictures I took at the start of the war, of protests on Kaplan Street [in Tel Aviv] and also of women who volunteered to make wreaths of flowers for the mourning families,” Perez explains.
She was adjudged to have done a good job in capturing the spirit of the tumultuous and emotive events in question and conveying the raw feelings and state of the local human condition in the immediate aftermath of that cataclysmic day a year and a half ago.
That talent for identifying and portraying some of the sensorial subtext to facial expressions and body language is evident in the 20 or so portraits hanging at Muslala through to May 30.
And what a merry – and otherwise disposed – cast of “inmates” Perez has lined up for us across a broad arc of ages, stations of life, religious leanings, and cultural and socio-political backdrops. Take, for example, craggy-looking Igor, who took a bit of persuading before he agreed to pose for Perez.
“To begin with, he didn’t want me to take his picture,” she laughs. “I caught him in the middle of a job.”
That frisson is palpable as Igor, screwdriver and voltameter at the ready, specs atop his ginger hair, stands on his ladder gazing somewhat concerned into the distance. In addition to her knack for catching her subjects’ personas, with more than a hint or two of their inner cerebral and emotional machinations, Perez has a firm handle on the crucial lighting element of her art.
The majority of the prints feature men and women in the colorful epicenter, brightly and uncompromisingly lit, against a mostly dim, frequently dingy, and more monochrome background. That, more or less, encapsulates much of the Clal Building zeitgeist.
“Many of the photographs are predominantly dark,” notes Yablonsky. “The color springs out of them.” It does indeed. And not just the chromic appearance of the sitters and their clothing. Perez manages to impart more than a little of their individual emotional underpinnings.
SOME LET it all hang out, while others are more reserved.
Daniel, for example, from a print shop on the third floor of the Clal Building, unabashedly pertains to the former category. Eyebrows statuesquely arched, bushy graying beard in full flow, he gives the viewer the full brunt of his take on the world from his little corner above Jaffa Street.
The look in his chocolate-brown eyes, which have clearly seen a thing or two, sits midway along the trajectory between geniality and hard-earned wisdom. His body language, on the other hand, seems to be of a more jocular nature, as if the kippah-wearing gent is poking fun at Perez and hinting that she might be better off doing something else than aiming her camera at him.
Then there is a delightful snap of Lila lining up the pink ball in a game of snooker on the fourth floor. Here, too, Perez deftly straddles the light-and-shadow divide with the green baize powerfully illuminated, while the adjoining table and surrounding walls fade into the background.
There is, however, an additional intriguing dimension to this frame as various spots in the room are reflected – albeit blurred – in mirrors on the walls.
I note one of the overhead fluorescent light fittings is sagging at one end, resonating the oxymoronic nature of the Clal Building microcosm.
As any portrait photographer knows – unless, that is, you take the more opportunist candid camera route favored by the likes of Israel Prize laureate snapper Alex Levac – it is best to get to know your subject before setting up your tripod and lighting accessories.
Perez says she did her best to engage in the preliminaries before hoisting her camera. “I talked to many of them. Some were very hesitant to begin with, but I heard a lot of stories about relationships between the people in the building.
“I also heard that they [authorities] are always planning to demolish the building.”
WHAT?! KNOCK down our beloved Clal tower, after all these years? After all it – and we – have endured? That sounds downright unconscionable.
“Yes, they have been talking for ages about connecting this with the tower block next to us,” David tells me. He initially comes over as a no-nonsense type toughened by years of overcoming, or sidestepping, existential hurdles. David is a locksmith on the fourth floor. His picture doesn’t appear in the exhibition.
I discover Perez is not the first to prowl the building, camera at the ready, and that not everyone is happy to be documented for general public consumption.
“Yes, she [Perez] approached me about that, but I’m fed up with all these journalists and media people coming here to get stories about us,” he says with an air of resignation. “It is like we have become museum exhibits, sort of specimens, remnants of dying traditional occupations.”
He didn’t, however, object to chatting with me, and we passed the time of day affably as he duplicated my front door key.
David is one of the building’s veterans. “I have been here since I was a kid, since the mid-1980s. I used to come here when my father ran the business.” He is a die-hard local. “I live in Jerusalem. This is my home. I don’t care how bad the situation gets here. I am not going anywhere.”
That steeliness permeates the Clal Building.
As I met more of the people who work there, I came across a panoply of characters, from a watch repairman who – pardon the pun – hardly gave me the time of day as he peered at me bleary-eyed through his cigarette smoke, to Naomi, a jolly materteral [maternal aunt] woman who fittingly stars in the No Despair at Clal roll-out.
“Don’t leave your cellphone out here,” she cautions as I chat with David inside. I express my thanks, and our paths cross again a few minutes later on a lower floor. When I tell her that I saw her picture in the exhibition, she favors me with a warm, beaming smile.
It is, indeed, one of the most fetching frames at Muslala as Naomi poses with hubby, Aharon, in the back room of their Bulgarian cuisine catering business. The scene is one of faded, if not charred, glory, but the couple exude a sense of pride in their daytime job and seems unfussily happy together. They appear to be perfectly content to eke out their living at Clal. That is a recurring theme.
“Ilana [one of the sitters] told me she is browned off with the image the building has taken on over the years,” Perez smiles wryly. “I think that is part of the reason she wanted me to take her picture. She wanted me to show the world the beauty there is here.”
THERE IS an undeniable buzz to the place and a sense of acceptance and quiet assurance betwixt the less appealing aspects.
Yosef, a cheery-looking Breslov Hassid, complete with de rigueur Na Nach[man] knitted kippah, simple garb, and flowing gray beard, was all good-natured bustle when I ran into him on the fifth floor, near a seemingly abandoned spot that sports a green neon sign that spells out the optimistic declaration adopted as the title of the exhibition.
In fact, the English translation misses the deft wordplay in the original Hebrew, Ein Yi-ush BeOlam – or BaOlam – Clal. “Clal” is not only the name of the veteran insurance company; it also means, in this context, “at all.” The two permutations of the preceding word offer different readings, either “in the world of the Clal Building” or “in the world at all.”
“Yes, we tried to find something in English that would convey that, but we didn’t quite manage it,” Yablonsky chuckles.
There are alluring characters right through the exhibition, such as Sami, who sits in front of his compact fourth-floor tailoring and clothing repair shop. There is an array of bobbins with threads of different colors and a sewing machine behind him. His eyes tell a multifaceted story of hardship and plenty of bumps and bruises along the way, but you can also tell he is there for the duration.
Marina, sitting in her hairdressing salon on the fifth floor, also looks proud of her little emporium and is clearly not going anywhere, longstanding demolition plans regardless. And Mashiach, a watchmaker on the fourth floor, poses for Perez immersed in his work, a small turquoise press appliance, and his striped sweater, offering a gaily colored, powerfully illuminated focus amid shelving laden with dozens of small black and gray boxes.
For Perez, the Clal Building is first and foremost about the people who work there and the Jerusalemites who pop by to get their hair done, photocopy a document, or get a favorite jacket patched.
“I come from Ness Ziona, and I went to school in Tel Aviv,” she says. She attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, where she studied classical trombone and toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in music before opting for photography.
“The studies at Bezalel were deferred because of the war, and I spent months walking around Jerusalem with a camera and getting to know the city.” Perez liked what she saw, especially at the Clal Building. “I fell in love with the people here. It is very different from Tel Aviv. They are much friendlier here.”
You can’t miss that in No Despair at Clal. At the age of 22, Perez clearly has a long road to travel in her chosen art form. She has made an impressive start, and no doubt we will be hearing – and seeing – more from her before too long.
The exhibition, located on the eighth floor of the Clal Building, is on display through to May 30.
