For twenty years I’ve asked what brings people together

Sharon Avraham he/him · lives between Portugal and Israel

I photograph to understand the world around me. I build things to allow people to meet. Belonging, for me, is an elusive particle: something we have forgotten and have to relearn in the reality we live in now. Almost everything I have made grows out of that search.

I call myself an artivist. I believe the job of art is to aim a sharp lens at life, at society and at the self, and to make a statement. I move between conceptual and documentary work.

Burning Man was a turning point for me. I saw a world where the line between art and the people around it blends, and where that inspiration draws people together. I came home and was part of the core team that created Midburn in 2011. I built and led its art department, and with a group of talented artists I formed Fugara, a collective that made interactive installations out of wood, metal and light and carried them beyond the burn.

For over a decade I developed my family’s farm in Ein Vered as a community lab. People came to make art, live together and learn how to run things themselves. It was the fertile ground that helped shape Midburn and Fugara, a place for meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, and a gathering place for people from all walks of life and from all around the world.

Since 2018, when I took part in the Middle East Jam, most of my work goes into shared life between Israelis and Palestinians. I’m one of the co-founders of ELHAM, The Day After, an NGO focused on grassroots initiatives between Israel and Palestine and across the Middle East as a whole. And the camera is always with me: in the field, in the office and on the stage.

Today I visit intentional communities with ToGather, a research project that asks people how they actually stay together, and I write about it almost every week. I design community life programs at the Arava Institute, together with Israelis, Palestinians and people from all around the world. And I help projects I’m aligned with share their story through social media.