Serial No. 3817131

The life of a teenage girl in Israel is interrupted when she is plucked out of her environment at an age when sexual, educational, and family values are at their highest exploration point. She is then placed in a rigorous institution, where individuality becomes a secondary matter, making room for nationalism.
My project is an exploration of the mandatory military service of Israeli female soldiers based on my own experience in the Israel Defense Forces between the years 1988-1990. My photographs disclose a complexity of emotions with an emphasis on melancholy. The soldier is often caught in a moment of self-reflection, uncertainty, a break from her daily reality, as if questioning her own identity. With this project I wish to seek answers to matters that were left unresolved, and to shed some light on this defining moment in the lives of Israeli women.


www.rachelpapo.com
papo.photo@gmail.com