Book: APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART

Garden of Eden

The only known authenticated photographic record of a trip to the actual ‘Garden of Eden’ of the Bible

Garden of Eden: Prologue (Artwork by Jakob Zaaiman).

Garden of Eden: Prologue [Limited edition artwork] Artwork

Prologue

Keep down, they say. This involves lying alone on the back seat of a car in a canvas hood, being driven for hours on end, always at speed, tyres whining, changing cars many times. They took my watch, and set everything in my camera to zero. No one talking. Then holed up in windowless rooms, waiting. My guides speaking Arabic, I think, I wouldn’t know. Iraqi middlemen. Photographs, but not their real faces. Military airport. Difficult to know which country I was in. Not Israel. Not Russia. Somewhere airless, and dry. I have no idea. I feel jetlagged, confused. Finding it hard to breathe. Suddenly feeling captive, as if I had been kidnapped. I am shown an ancient picture of a locust. I lose consciousness.