An artistic documentary book by Asaf Amran

A landscape disappearing
as it is photographed

Five years of photography became an immersive art book about the Dead Sea — a personal visual story inviting reflection on beauty, loss and memory.

Dying Beauty book and slipcase visualization
Visualization of the planned book and slipcase24 × 30 cm

This is not a photo album.

This 201-page book gives equal weight to photography and first-person writing. It brings together compelling art, stories from the field and precise scientific context, inviting a deeper reflection on beauty, loss, memory and our responsibility toward a disappearing landscape. Some of the places in the book have already changed or no longer exist as photographed — each image preserves a singular convergence of water, salt, light and time.

The turning point

This is where it all began

The same place, before and after. Two photographs that show in an instant why this record matters.

The same Dead Sea salt formation in August 2026, after the water retreated and the landscape changed
NOW
The same Dead Sea salt formation in October 2020, when water filled the bay
THEN
201pages
2editions — Hebrew and English
5dimensions of photography
2021–2026an ongoing project
The dying heart of the Dead Sea
The project

The dying heart of the Dead Sea

Dying Beauty began in 2021, when I returned to a salt formation I had photographed a year earlier and discovered that the place had changed completely. In that moment, the camera in my hands ceased to be only a tool for creating a beautiful image; it became a means of testimony.

During the first stage of the project I returned to the Dead Sea every week, sometimes twice a week, to create a body of work across four dimensions: the seasons; night, day, sunrise and sunset; stills, video and time-lapse; photography from the air, land and water. In 2025, a fifth dimension was added — macro photography.

The book creates a visual memory of a landscape and a period changing before our eyes — a singular document of artistic, historical and national value.

At the heart of the project is a contradiction: the images are breathtaking, yet their beauty is born of retreat, dehydration and disintegration. The receding water reveals coves, crystals and new formations — and from the moment they appear, they too begin to die.

DEATH GIVES BIRTH TO BEAUTY.

Beauty is not proof that everything is all right.
A journey that became a book

The project keeps moving

2021The project is born from returning to a place that had changed
2022The Dying Beauty exhibition opens at ZOA Gallery
2023The film screens and is nominated at the Richmond International Film Festival
2025Macro photography is added as a fifth dimension
2026The book is completed in Hebrew and English
The first edition

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