In Till the End, the ubiquity of place resulting from a photograph that actually obliterates every origin, every bond, is superimposed on stones from Jerusalem. The stones are enfolded in a skin of the moment, contrasted, and “palimpsested” by Sabella’s memory with the memory of the stone, readable only geologically, with its “perspiring memory,” as Francis Ponge circumscribed the sublime, simple as well as complex memory of a stone...

... Till the End Sabella draws photography into an allegorical configuration of perpetual loss.

"Printed onto a piece of yellow limestone from Jerusalem is an old black and white family photograph of two children playing with a horse in an area close to the walls of the Old City. In making Till the End – Spirit of a Place, Sabella revisited and picked up small stones from places that had been important to him as a child. ‘It [the work] has an archaeological quality to it and emanates a profound sense of loss. Yet it also offers an archive of subjective memories without resorting to the sentimental.’The image evokes a sense of place but at the same time questions the artist’s relationship to that place and to his own identity. The Palestinian artist Kamal Boullata’s (1942–2019) words capture this notion: ‘The city that from time immemorial was considered a bridge between heaven and earth may be absent in Sabella’s photographs, but everything in them indicates how, in solitude, the native photographer rebuilt his own Jerusalem.’

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As part of the exhibition Reflections: Contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa at the British Museum. (Learn more)