



1 / 13 Chevron Chevron A Palestinian man on the beach in the Gaza Strip, 2010. I jump into a cab when I first arrive in Tel Aviv. After one minute, the driver asks me where I’m from. When I answer, he says, “Sweden. That’s a nice country, but you have too many Arabs.” An hour later it is time for the next cab. I ask him if he likes Tel Aviv, and he says, “No, there are too many Arabs here.”

This week’s fiction piece, “Means of Suppressing Demonstrations,” by Shani Boianjiu, instantly made me think of the photographer Linda Forsell’s project “Life’s a Blast.” The photographs, which Forsell made in Israel and Palestine from 2008 to 2010, were recently published as a book. Forsell, who is Swedish, “worked randomly, meeting people of all sorts, letting one thing lead to another.” The resulting photos and accompanying text provide a unusual perspective, managing to be both intimate and voyeuristic.

“My first trip to Israel and Palestine was an intuitive leap,” Forsell writes in the book. “Nothing turned out as planned. In this state of confusion, I started photographing the everyday conflict and the people living in it. Alongside the actual attacks, clashes and casualties, there is a conflict going on within each person in Israel and Palestine. Ordinary people are making extraordinary choices to get by. Reinforced by the small things that build up hate and the difficult choices everyone is forced to make, the entire region is pervaded by a certain psychological state of mind. People look, but they don’t see.”

Here’s a selection of Forsell’s photographs and words from “Life’s a Blast.”