I called the Tel Aviv work The Sliding Door because that's what the trip was — a detour that became a body of work. I went for a week and the city wouldn't let me leave with an empty card.
Most of it was made in the Carmel Market and the Jaffa flea market, in that first hour when the light comes in low between the stalls. Mountains of spice. Pomegranates stacked like jewels. The cookie man, the spice merchant, the storytellers in the old city — faces that have stood in the same square for thirty years, framed for a tenth of a second.
Some are loud, some are still, but all of them are honest.
There's a different gravity to photographing a place that's lived-in rather than looked-at. Nobody in these frames is performing. They're working, arguing, laughing, selling — and that's exactly the picture I want.
It's one of my favourite series precisely because I didn't plan it. The best doors are the ones you don't see until they slide open.
— Jude