In the introduction to Testimony, Gillian Laub describes a beach in Tel Aviv where the division between Jews and Arabs momentarily dissolves. Women with headscarves and heavy robes relax next to girls in skimpy bikinis, willfully oblivious of the conflicts raging nearby. The beach provides a sliver of hope for Laub, whose intimate portraits of Jews and Arabs living in Israel expose the devastation of religious warfare.

As a secular American Jew, Laub began photographing in Israel in 2002 to obtain a deeper understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moving away from public confrontations, she entered private homes to speak with and photograph young Jews and Arabs. Laub asked each individual to write about how violence affects his or her life and snapped a raw and riveting portrait. Her rich, color photographs capture teenagers and young parents in intimate settings, simultaneously exposing their vulnerability and honoring their strength. Similar in style to her portraits of celebrities and her family, the Testimony images seem to break open the individual for a revealing moment, and the pairing of these portraits with the personal statements conveys appalling tragedy.

Among the subjects of Testimony are young girls playing in their backyard, twin sisters on leave from the army, and a young man blinded in a terrorist attack. The youngest of them live in sanctuary from warfare, one girl even describing her life as a "fairytale," but age brings exposure to violence, either through required army service or the shock of a suicide bombing. The amputees and burn victims featured in Laub's book, both Jews and Arabs, were maimed during their commute to work or on a trip to the mall. One particularly devastating photograph features Kinneret, a young woman with burns on 70% of her body. Her statement, touching on the difficulties of rehabilitation, expresses a quiet sorrow and a steely determination to heal. Surprisingly, none of the victims of terrorism harbor hatred or vengefulness — they just hope for peace.

Besides the vividness of Laub's portraiture, Testimony reveals specific, private experiences of a much-publicized conflict. The personal pain and exhaustion evident in the images, and further discussed in essays by Ariella Azoulay and Raef Zreik, convince the reader, more than any political argument could, of the importance of peace in Israel.

-Bryony Roberts