Beyond the Wall: Kids With Cameras - Jerusalem

November 9, 2007

Author: LAUREL GRAEBER

Source: The New York Times

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE4DC103BF93AA35752C1A9619C8B63

'BEYOND THE WALL: KIDS WITH CAMERAS -- JERUSALEM' In Israel, Jewish and Muslim children rarely see the world through one another's eyes. But not long ago, some did -- with the help of a camera's lens.

The results are at the JCC in Manhattan, where ''Beyond the Wall'' illustrates the efforts of Jason Eskenazi, a New York photojournalist, to teach photography to children who were neighbors but seemed hopelessly divided by religion and politics. Mr. Eskenazi, with a grant from the nonprofit group Kids With Cameras, traveled to Jerusalem in 2004 with 24 point-and-shoot cameras. By distributing leaflets in the Muslim quarter, he recruited a dozen Muslims, all 8 to 12; a Jewish center helped find an equal number of Jews the same ages. Mr. Eskenazi met with each group separately. ''The goal was to make a portrait of Jerusalem,'' he said. But he also had a more difficult, and at first hidden, objective: someday to show each group the other's work.