Yad Eliyahu, a Neighborhood in East Tel Aviv

Since 2018, I have been documenting my childhood neighborhood of Yad Eliyahu in East Tel Aviv, where I still live today with my family, out of a profound sense of urgency. This series is a documentary-archival project that follows the massive urban renewal processes taking place here. It explores the consequences of erasing a familiar childhood landscape and its social, economic, and cultural impact on the human fabric of life. 

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The neighborhood is characterized by "train buildings"—small apartments lined up in four-story blocks, with wide public spaces and shared courtyards between them where we used to play as children. In my daily wanderings, I look for what is about to disappear: these very courtyards, the vegetation, and the historical layers that make up this place. Through the lens of the camera—which provides a sense of distance and allows me to look anew—I return to these sites time and again, photographing the changes they undergo, from the stages of demolition to their total disappearance.

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The photographs capture the essence of the neighborhood just before the transformation, drawing a personal and documentary archive of a place whose character is slipping away. The piles upon piles of construction debris, which were once people's homes, have now become our new local landscape. In the midst of all this rapid change, the camera is my way of holding onto what used to be, trying to make time stand still, if only for a moment.