Hide & Seek

“As a journalist, I have spent years documenting reality and seeking the truth that hides behind it. One of the central subjects in my work has been walls. I have climbed over many walls and fences, and have noticed that more than hiding what is behind them, their very appearance reveals something about what they conceal – sometimes more than would be revealed if they were knocked down.
In 2008, as a photographer for The Associated Press in China, I spent a year in Beijing during the preparations for the Olympics. My long stay there included intensive and daily contact with an environment undergoing dramatic change. Western-style concrete monsters popped up every day, in my eyes an expression of the destruction and neglect of the local landscape in favor of what looked like wrapped presents intended for the West: opulent on the outside and grey and empty on the inside. Against the everyday greyness of Beijing, the colorful new buildings stood as a surreal testament of a desire to resemble the West as much as possible. The contrast that recurs in my work – between colors, between subject and background, reality and imagination, left and right – was everywhere, just waiting for me to photograph it.
I have worked as a documentary photographer for close to a decade, and people have always appeared in my work. At first, I photographed them to tell their stories in my own way. This time I decided to tell a story about people without people”.
Oded Balilty, May 2009

Oded Balilty is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, 2007