Photographer Ariel Van Straten fulfills his dream to document the princes of the desert that compelled him in his childhood, before they disappear. The result is a photography exhibition opened on January 7, 2021 at the Artists House in Tel Aviv. To carry out the project and locate the Bedouin sheikhs remaining – about 35 of them in the Negev – Van Straten teamed up with a Bedouin friend, Salam al-Touri. “He’s producing this whole thing. He’s finding the sheikhs, he made the schedule to go and meet them,” Van Straten says. “Salam started off with the sheikhs that he knew and then he would ask the sheikhs who else should be in the exhibition.” The exhibition featured 35 life-sized portraits. According to Van Straten, this is for visitors to get a chance to look these men in the eye and see them face-to-face, as opposed to through the more common and less complimentary lens of news reports and opinions. “They’re beautiful pictures to look at,” he says. “They’re a beautiful society that not many people know about.” Source: Israel21c