The True Colors of the IDF

Everyone is familiar with "regular" pictures of army life-soldiers straining during the last leg of a march, standing at attention in a swearing-in ceremony, or peering through a pair of binoculars while manning a front position outpost.

But Yehudit Matzkel's exhibition and book Skirt on the Way captures far more than these more formal or familiar moments in military life. "Skirt on the Way" is the IDF jargon used to announce a female approaching an "all male" domain, such as living quarters, which Matzkel took as the title to her three-year documentary of one group of soldiers from the Givati Brigade. The documentary was designed to depict the progress of a soldier in a combat unit from his enlistment to his demobilization.

A professional photographer, Matzkel has devoted two previous exhibitions to the IDF: A Soldier's Mother (1998), which focused on women's bellies, representing the "second cutting of the umbilical cord" that takes place when a child goes into the army; and Born Dead (1999), based on photographs of headstones of fallen soldiers. Skirt on the Way, she says, "seeks to capture the essence of the military experience on a personal, almost intimate level." At the same time, it unwittingly reveals the "soft underbelly" of Israeli military culture that most foreigners are not aware of.

The project began in 1994, when Matzkel approached the IDF with an unusual request: to document her own son's military service. Having thoroughly recorded her son's life from birth, she did not wish to sit on the sidelines at this crucial juncture of his life. Rather than rejecting her request outright, the IDF came back with a counter-offer. Yes, Yehudit Matzkel-civilian photographer and Israeli mother-could document three years of military service from induction to demobilization, but not in her son's unit. Thus, between March 1996 and March 1999 Matzkel accompanied a company of new recruits in the Givati Infantry Brigade from the day of their induction, spending up to ten days per month sleeping and eating on their base, while recording their development on film. She kept to three rules: she did not engage the group in prolonged conversation, nor did she reveal the purpose of her presence. But every time one of the soldiers saw her approach, he would shout a warning to his comrades, "Skirt on the way!"

The outcome comprises not only the expected-well-composed pictures of a group of soldiers cleaning their weapons; eyeing hard-earned purple berets after a grueling 76 km. march; an IDF uniform on a hanger dangling from the corner of a window frame-Matzkel's motherly eye also caught "fleeting moments" others might miss, like a sandwich of canned corn and ketchup on bread, concocted out of battle rations. "You'd be surprised what seems tasty when one is hungry," she says ruefully. Some situations are instantly recognizable by Israeli parents, such as a photo of a soldier carrying a fresh boxed giant-size pizza under his arm as he leads his parents to his tent on visiting day.

The exhibition is filled with many other sights as well as more intimate situations that rarely get recorded. "My camera exposes the ability of these young recruits to adapt to hardships,'make-do' and improvise," says Matzkel. But they also need their home comforts. Soldiers bring their own sheets, extra towels and underwear from home, all of which come in every color and design imaginable: Mickey Mouse, plaids, dainty flowers. In one photo-which Matzkel says she took to illustrate the makeshift quality of living conditions-her lens caught a with different-sized towels and colored boxer shorts hanging like battle flags above the sand line bagged machine gun position.

Perhaps the epitome of Israel's "civilianized" military evidenced in Skirt on the Way belongs to a series of shots of soldiers trying to nap while off duty, taken in the heat of the summer at an IDF outpost. Matzkel says she is particularly fond of a photo of a soldier, still fully dressed in fatigues, curled up like a green ball in "an almost fetal position", which she views as a reaction to the lack of privacy and strident noise-filled environment one encounters in barracks life. Another is a picture of one of "her boys" in the closing pages of the book. The subject: a by now seasoned Givati soldier lying on a fold-up regulation army cot, on top of a crumpled sheet decorated with huge blossoms, his head resting on a flowered pillow. Dressed only in a pair of black-red-white plaid boxers and combat boots, the soldier trains a small plastic fan on his face in an attempt to "beat the heat".