Hope should be a minefield

Ravid Lander (born 1988) is a self-taught photographer hailing from Canada, presently rooted in Tel Aviv. His photographic portfolio orbits around individuals and their narratives, delving into notions of identity, affinity, fragility, and social issues.

Hope should be a minefield

(Text by Dori Ben Alon)

The profile of a teenage boy wearing a white sweatshirt, a sleek AirPods earbud nestled in his ear, with a tuft of long, curly hair peeking out from beneath his hoodie.

A goldfish swims in a cheap plastic aquarium beside an artificial green water plant, trapped inside a transparent cage—seeing its surroundings but never truly part of them.

A dirty microwave sits atop a chair, which has been placed on a table. The power cable wasn’t long enough, so an extra step stool was added to shorten the distance between it and the power source it depends on to function.

Three fleeting glimpses that hint at life. In two of them, there are no figures at all. Evidence of human existence does not require a person to narrate it—it knows how to manifest itself in other ways. Photographer Ravid Lander has been collecting these delicate traces of existence for the past two years, ever since he accidentally encountered a group of yeshiva students in South Tel Aviv while they were renovating an old building near the yeshiva where they live and study.

The mutual curiosity between him and the boys led to the development of an unexpected, long-term relationship, through which Ravid began accompanying this group of teenagers in their daily lives over the past two years. He meets them about once a month; they ask to be photographed, he talks, they share. Like an anthropologist, Ravid weaves relationships with the boys, documenting their evolution through his camera—even if it doesn’t always leave the backpack to take a picture.

Ravid Lander (b. 1988) is a self-taught photographer, born in Canada, and currently living in Tel Aviv. He is a psychologist by profession, and it is through this lens that he also approaches photography. For him, photography is, above all, an event of human encounter, and as such, it demands the dedication of both parties. However, one could argue that, much like the therapeutic encounter in a clinic, the photographic event is not entirely symmetrical, and within it, interpretive priority is granted to the photographer—even if the content comes exclusively from the subject.

The series of photographs that emerged from this project—though not its sole outcome, as the core of the project lies in the building of relationships—offers insight into the in-between lives of these boys. A yarmulke hidden beneath a hoodie is not merely a technical detail; it is a marker of a complex identity, which Ravid seeks to gently unravel in his images. The emotional power of the photographs stems from their sensitivity and their ability to portray figures caught in an internal conflict, facing contradictory expectations, without falling into cliché. A revealing sidelock, a Tassel peeking out—expressing a desire to blend in, without it being clear into what.