Facing death and destruction: the prints of Raymond Prucher

Marcelo Guimarães Lima

Jenin ImPrints by Raymond Prucher,
Whimperbang Press, 2026

 

 

Foreword

In Jenin ImPrints, artist Raymond Prucher memorializes the massacre perpetrated by the armed forces of the State of Israel against the Palestinians in the refugee camp of Jenin in occupied Palestine in 2002. The refugee camp was established in 1953 to house Palestinians who were violently, illegally expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948 and after. In time, the refugee camp became a place not just of oppressive, restricted and humiliating living conditions for a displaced population, but also an important place of strong and persistent moral and political resistance, of popular struggles under harsh circumstances against a powerful and brutal enemy.

Jenin had therefore to be silenced, suppressed as much as possible with utmost violence by a military force that would at the time, as today, declare to target “terrorists”, but would not distinguish between its declared “armed enemies” and the general population, including women, children, the sick, the elderly, disable persons, etc. The massacre perpetrated against the refugees of Jenin in 2002 was recorded in writings, images, films, testimonies of those who survived and those who witnessed the killings, the systematic destruction of lives and the destruction of the elemental living resources of the camp.

Raymond Prucher is a North-American artist, designer and poet who knows first-hand the people and places of Jenin and Palestine, having experienced life in occupied Palestine at different periods, have witnessed oppression as daily life occurrences, as a kind of “generalized”, almost “normalized” condition. “Normalized” indeed from the point of view of the oppressors.

This series of artworks reflect, therefore, not just historical knowledge, awareness of the on-going history of our problematic times, but it is also an exercise in sympathy and care for those who suffer injustice in a world in which humanity's moral compass appears to have completely lost its ways and direction. It is an expression of empathy, loyalty and friendship from the distance, and yet with the closeness proper to the human spirit and the human heart as it manifests itself and recognizes itself across space and time.

 

These linoleum prints elaborate on photographic records of death and destruction in Jenin. Using with great ability elements of the graphic language of the linoleum print, the artist performs a kind of visual “epoché”, so to speak, a reduction to essentials, the visible essentials that can cut through layers of superfluous and distracting displays, and their related “narratives”, and provide us with a clear vision, a shining contemplation of the inner truth of what we see, of the truth proper to vision and the visible.

The structural visual element is here the “absolute” contrast between light and dark, the white paper as a kind of soil or luminous base, the black lines and masses, at times together with equally differentiated uniform gray tones, as elements that both separate and unite forms in a solidary final composition.

The body of a little girl half buried on the soil, the burned head of a man, corpses amid ruins,material destruction, demolition of buildings, are presented in these prints by way of strong elementary tone contrasts, in the play of two-dimensional forms and patterns indicating how forms are made to inhabit actual and virtual spaces, and to signify. In this way, the artwork educates the eye to visual rhetoric, pointing out the need for viewers to be aware of the ways the elements of perception help to reveal or conceal reality.

Historically, the print as an art form and as a visual communication discipline has taken part in the ethical and political struggles of modern times. Today as in the recent past, we live in a world marked by wars, death and destruction, by violence and brutality, by the cynicism of perpetrators of genocide and their allies and supporters. In such a dire context, we can point out that Art is indeed the instrument that allows us to look straight into the face of tragedy.

January 2026

 

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Fifty percent of proceeds will go to the registered nonprofit Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. 
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