Damascus Gate

I sat on the stone steps with my camera as I have done every day since I arrived. It's a mere hundred yards from our hotel.
Damascus Gate is one of 8 entrances to the Old City, each dating to various periods ranging from 1000 bc when Solomon built the first Temple, to 1572 when the Ottomans had control of the Holy Land.

This is the finest theater in Jerusalem, and I didn't want to let go. All the characters in the drama of conflict were portrayed here in the swirling throngs, and I needed somehow to see them with a fresh eye, to watch them through a telephoto lens and focus on their faces, one by one, instant after instant, and then to put the camera aside for a while and soak up the sensations of sight and sound that have now become part of me.

It is the center of conflicting absolutes, of certainty, of righteousness. Its lofty refinement of intellect and theology has given enlightenment to its violence, mixing the knowledge of time into eternal bloodshed. I'm slowly falling in love with this city.

One of the things I am doing is photographing the wall that has been put up over the last 5 years. I got this earlier today.