"No one says to the olive tree: How beautiful you are! But: How noble and how splendid!" wrote the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. These trees that blanket the hillsides of the West Bank have been a symbol for its people. A source of income, they represent their resistance and their roots in this land occupied by Israel since 1967. Berlin residents Adam Broomberg, a 53-year-old South African-Jewish artist, and Rafael Gonzalez, a 27-year-old German-Spanish photographer have immortalized these West Bank olive trees, some of them thousands of years old, in a series of portraits. A tree holds the center of each image, drawing the eye into the details of its gnarled trunk. In the background are the signs of Palestinian life: the wall erected by Israel, the dense dwellings, the cemetery.

"I'd never seen trees that old! Standing next to the 4,500-year-old Al Badawi olive tree, touching it, was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life," said Broomberg. "Think of all this tree has witnessed, how many empires it has seen come and go." These olive trees, so powerful in the still portraits of their book Anchor in the Landscape, have been under threat.

Since 1967, at least 800,000 trees have been uprooted, burnt or destroyed by Israeli authorities or settlers. Two of the olive trees in the book were felled after the photos were taken. "It's very important that some kind of archive exists to prove the existence of these trees, which have been there for so long but have become so vulnerable" over the past 50 years, said Broomberg.

Stone-throwing and checkpoints

Each portrait is captioned with the GPS coordinates of the olive tree's location. Together, they form a map that focuses on the southern West Bank region of Hebron, where Israeli settlers have moved into the heart of the old Palestinian town. Here, Broomberg established the NGO Artists + Allies × Hebron (AAH) with Issa Amro, a well-known Palestinian activist fighting to stay on his land. The 44 year old's terrace overlooks an olive grove. The photography duo worked in the field, using a large-format view camera that requires both time and precision. The fact that there were two of them meant they weren't exposed to too much danger.

"One day, we were inside Issa Amro's house in Hebron, and we were surrounded by settlers' children. There were between 30 and 40 of them, and they started throwing stones at us," said Gonzalez, whose first published work is this book. In the field, "Adam was pushed and hit by settlers on several occasions," he said. "It took much longer to take the photos than we'd anticipated." The other challenge was to ensure that the film was not exposed to light during checks at checkpoints or at the airport.

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