For me, visiting the infamous dead sea was a strange experience. Unlike most of Israel to which I arrived without too many preconceived ideas, I had envisioned (wrongly) that the dead sea would be a lush paradise; stretches of open sandy beaches, vibrant with activity, which I now realise was quite silly considering the enormous clue in the name. This series of photos for me are weirdly comic, laughing at my own misconceptions, but also generally at tourism and being one myself. I found the tourist beaches incredibly strange places; paying entry, walking through gift shops full of dead sea products, to areas of artificial grass, picnic benches and eventually down to the muddy beach and cordoned off bathing area.
I took these photos more interested in what I felt was a bizzarre tourist destination, instead of focusing on what usually comes to mind when you think of the dead sea - floating and mud. I found the atmosphere of the place, how before the tour buses arrive these private beaches are completely empty, then for an hour or two people tread the same trail of thousands before them, before getting back on the bus and dissapearing clammy with sweat and salt.
What also intrigued me was learning that the dead sea is shrinking, and quite rapidly, around 1m per year. It is also a dangerous area for sink holes, roads dissapearing and having to be re-built. I guess tourism here will always continue, as it has done for thousands of years, and so it should, its an important source of income for the country and the people. I just felt the strangeness of visiting such a talked about place that is 'dead' and also dissapearing. I hope the environment here can recover somewhat and that the tourism industry in Israel and Palestine can change to become more steady. If people lose their fear of visiting a place they suppose to be consumed by war, terror and divisions, I hope that they can start to explore the country off their own backs, taking time to get to know places and not just the sites, as I would love to do more in future.
