Cathrielah Baht Israel has been documenting life inside the African Hebrew Israelite community in Dimona for over three decades. She has photographed momentous occasions, such as visits by Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, and Shimon Peres, as well as countless community events, like New World Passover celebrations, weddings, and graduation ceremonies. Her archive contains tens of thousands of negatives, prints, and digital images dating back to 1987—a treasure trove of African Hebrew Israelite and Israeli history.
Most of those photographs remain private and unpublished. But next month, Baht Israel will share some of her fine art photographs publicly for the first time. Her solo exhibition, titled “Royalty,” grew out of a project for an online class in which she imagined what African kings and queens throughout history would have looked like. She recruited other African Hebrew Israelites, colloquially known as Black Hebrews, to create elaborate costumes and sit for portraits in a makeshift studio in the community’s Village of Peace.
