Fractured

The archive of Dutch photographer Ad van Denderen on Israel and Palestine spans the years 1993 to 2016. What began as a journalistic assignment gradually evolved into a long-term documentary project. Over more than two decades, Van Denderen witnessed the transformation of a landscape marked by illegal settlements, the First and Second Intifada, checkpoints, walls, and the gradual reshaping of territory and everyday life.

Moving between Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, he photographed and spoke to people on all sides: families, workers, settlers, soldiers and political leaders —including Hamas in their early days. His photos offer a unique, personal view on a conflict too often reduced to headlines.

The archive begins in 1993, the year of the Oslo Accords. The agreement embodied hope; coexistence seemed within reach, and a civil society began to take shape. More than twenty years later, Van Denderen’s work reveals a territory fractured by walls, checkpoints, and deepening divisions. Meaningful encounters between Israelis and Palestinians—from everyday exchanges to political negotiations—appear increasingly absent.

In 2016, he drew a line. Witnessing the conflict unfold had become too painful. Years later, when his eldest son suggested returning to the place in Israel where he had been born in 1964, Van Denderen declined.

Fractured – Palestine 1993-2016 explores what remains after the decades of conflict Van Denderen documented: landscapes, borders, communities, memories, and the hopes once invested in the future. Many of those hopes have since been shattered by a brutal reality—along with the belief that human rights and international law would help protect them.