August 2008 when traveling to Kathmandu with my family was the first time I ever exhibited my photographs, in a show I called “From the Lowest Place on Earth”. At 420 meters below sea level, the Dead Sea lies in a deep crack in the earth, between Israel and Jordan, part of the Great African Rift.

In the past year the light that had accompanied me in my life was extinguished and my own light flickered. I return to the area by the Dead Sea and wrestle to capture the light. The sun works with an incredible palette of colors, emerald, turquoise, cerulean blue, ultramarine, pink and purple, yellow ochre, orange and dusty umber.

In a world that is sometimes hard to comprehend and rapidly encroaching on nature, especially in a small country like Israel I framed these photographs to capture the pristine beauty of nature. I wanted to convey the solitude you can find in the desert – a refuge through the ages for kings, prophets, Jewish sects and Byzantine monks. I find solace in the quiet and beauty of this area by the Dead Sea.

Many of the photographs display the contrasts in the landscape – between wet and dry, water and desert; the contrast between rock and vegetation and between the broad horizontal expanse of the Dead Sea and the cliffs and mountains that rise vertically above it. In some photographs, like the one below, I put aside the landscape to capture the colors and patterns in the picture to create an abstract composition.