Bridging memories: training the imagination to go visiting in Israel/Palestine

Understanding imagination as a performative political action, and therefore as an action that requires training, is at the centre of this paper. Bridging Memory is an activist intervention in which body-sized photographs of Palestinian refugees living today in a refugee camp in South Lebanon were posted by Israeli activists in the place from which they were expelled. The analysis of the project demonstrates the centrality of memory and activism in training a political imagination in Israel/Palestine. Furthermore, this case study illustrates how expanding the limits of the imagination through photography, articulating the ‘right of return’ as part of ‘the right to have rights’ can help Israeli Jews visualise the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes.