We are a group of documentary photographers acting for social change, convinced in the power of photography as a vehicle of change through awareness. We seek to bring awareness to issues and situations that we believe create social injustice, through images that question the society in which we live in.
We believe in the capability and obligation of photography and all arts in general to make a statement and to stimulate conscience. Photography is a channel of self expression. The camera is the mouth. The picture is the scream.
The group was integrated during the current year out of the belief that mutual work may serve the personal statement of each member and similarly make a conjoined statement that will echo from afar. Our first project was related to the situation of the Palestinian village of Bilin and the High Court of Justice 's decision regarding the trace of the Separation Wall. This work was the fruit of a year of working in the village, and the choosen format was a street exhibition that was displayed in several public spaces in Tel Aviv.
We have chosen the common space as a platform for presenting our works. Using the walls of the city as an open gallery is derived from the will to create a communication with the surrounding. Art as we grasp it shouldn't be locked in galleries, but open to the wide public. We address the people on the street, whom we like to influence, the ones in which the power to make real social changes is latent.
ActiveStills operates in Israel and Palestine and focuses on social and political documenting, projects production, publications and open exhibitions at topics in which the public is not exposed in its daily informative routines, managed by the established media.