Lenna Shterenberg

The lamentation of the orphaned bride is a project involving video and sound, consisting of a single, continuous, unedited photo segment and a soundtrack that was recorded and edited especially for this project.

The camera slow exposes the powerful scenery in the area of the watershed line between the Jerusalem hills and the Judean desert. Against the background of this harsh scenery, one can see the Pisgat Zeev Mizrach neighborhood, the Shuafat refugee camp, and the village of Anatot. The camera completes a 360-degree circle – and returns to the starting point.

The soundtrack includes a song – an original performance by the artist – and integrates sound clips from the environment. The poem “Lamentation of the Orphaned Bride” appears in Russian folklore: The bride sings about her mother, who passed away and is not present at the wedding. In the past, the mother of the bride had important roles in the wedding preparations and festivities. She decided how the wedding would look, and conducted an important part of the wedding rituals. In the case of a bride who was orphaned, it was customary to sing this song as part of a tradition of honoring one’s parents.

*Veselik )The word that appears in the poem without translation( is the name of the bride’s mother’s role in a traditional wedding in some areas in european continental Russia