With TEL AVIV, MARE publishing presents a high-end coffee table book with impressive photographs by Berlin-based photographer Jan Windszus shot before the pandemic. In the battle against the coronavirus, Israel has relied on strict travel restrictions for quite some time. Since Israel’s borders are open from the beginning of March again for tourists of all nationalities, we are more than delighted to present you the illustrated book here on GoSee.
Tel Aviv is an important center of ultra-orthodox Judaism and, at the same time, a gay-friendly party hotspot. The liberal-minded metropolis on the Mediterranean is like an island in the religious and political maze. But its inhabitants are not absent-minded partygoers, but instead witnesses and descendants of witnesses of catastrophes of great significance in world history and therefore endowed with great survival skills and inimitable philanthropic irony.
Jan Windszus, who has traveled Tel Aviv several times for MARE, found the wonders of this unique city in the Middle East for this illustrated book. The accompanying essay, as a love letter to the city, was written by Berlin-based author Marko Martin, who has profound knowledge of Tel Aviv, a city which has become his home away from home.
Here is a short passage written by the author : “Early in the evening one Friday on the beach of Tel Aviv, everything once again seems focused, and everything seems possible. Memory and present, thoughtfulness and a celebration of existence. One might say : The entire world (or at least a considerable part of it) in a nutshell. Or, in other words : The whole package – but by no means the kind for sale in all-inclusive travel programs or listed as a so-called insider tip with which only self-proclaimed experts would boast. After all, everything here is transacted on an open stage, or better yet, in plural : on the stages of this city ! Perhaps options is a better description, or possibilities, which are available precisely at this moment and only in this unique place in the world. Because whether or not a philosopher really has to leave home in order to understand essential inner workings is pretty much a matter of opinion, but one thing is certain : You would not even have to get up from your beach towel spread out on the sand beneath you or from the lookout on one of the small rock plateaus to see and to hear, to sense and to remember what this city is all about. Stories upon stories, populated by people and their biographies…” (Text: Marko Martin)
Jan Windszus, born in 1976, studied Graphic Design with a focus on Photography at the University of Applied Science and Art in Hildesheim. He lives and works as a freelance photographer in Berlin. His first job for mare led him to California in 2007, and Jan Windszus has since traveled around the world for mare, from Crimea to Hawaii. In 2013, his first illustrated book entitled ‘Lisbon’ appeared at mare publishing, followed in 2017 by ‘Greece’, which received the German Photo Book Award in 2018.
Tel Aviv, 132 pages, ISBN: 978-3-86648-638-6, www.mare.de