Micha Bar-Am was here: in the Fifties, in Be'er Sheva and the Negev, the Judean desert, the Arava and Sinai.
Since then, he has been here countless times: going southward, trekking on foot along desert trails, or cruising the skies in a light aircraft, but most of all observing and photographing. He has documented the life of the region and its inhabitants: the astounding natural phenomena, the new towns in the Negev and the pioneering immigrants who made their homes there, the farmers of the kibbutzim and moshavim, the Bedouins and their settlements, military manoeuvres, leaders and citizens, children and the aged, markets and buildings, festivals and funerals.
Over the years, Micha Bar-Am took hundreds of thousands of photographs across Israel and in other countries, and many have endured in our memory as key creative works. Any exhibition of his works requires focus and choice, as well as numerous concessions. The decision to focus on the Negev and southern Israel as mirrored in Bar-Am's corpus of work, is only natural for an exhibition held in the Negev Museum of Art—one of whose goals is to highlight the Negev's place and importance in Israeli art.