Rotem Rozental

Dr. Rotem Rozental is a photo-historian, writer and curator based in Los Angeles, where she serves as Chief Curator and Senior Director of Arts and Culture at American Jewish University. Her texts and scholarly research about contemporary Israeli and Jewisbh art, photographic archives and the image of nationality have been published in various outlets, among them Tablet, Artforum.com, Photographies and Philosophy of Photography. Between 2015-2016 she was the Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Research Fellow in Jewish Culture at the Center for Jewish History.

Facing East

Rotem Rozental looks at the work of artists Zoya Cherkassky, Yevgeniy Fiks, Katia Grokhovsky, and Jenny Yurshansky, raising questions about the existence of a Soviet-Jewish narrative and offering new insights into the culture that has shaped daily life in the Soviet Union, the Soviet-Jewish narrative, and the possibility of the existence of such a narrative.

This Is Not a Gun

Why is black skin perceived as a threat in American public spaces? How come a 17-year-old boy is portrayed in the American media as a thug? And how do a sandwich, a bible, or a bunch of keys get identified wrongfully as weapons and lead to the shooting of innocent passersby? Rotem Rozental writes about artist Cara Levine's project "This Is Not a Gun," which reacts to dozens of incidents of police shooting at citizens – mostly black men – as a result of misidentification.

In Tlilli, in Tlapalli

Writing about Josh T. Franco’s work “In Tlilli, In Tlapalli: Three Tejanos in Red and Black,” Rotem Rozental follows the migration and reincarnation of individuals, colors, ideas, and legacies between New York City and Marfa, TX.

An Expert Testimony

In Eyal Weizman’s new book, the reader joins the author as he hovers over contested territories in the Middle East, follows him as he traces the histories, ideologies, slippery borders, technologies, and narratives involved in the State-inflicted marginalization and displacement of the Bedouin inhabitants of the Negev desert, in Southern Israel. Rotem Rozental reviews “The Conflict Shoreline,” as well as Weizman’s methodology of forensic visual culture research.