Fallen Empires, the new project and book by Shai Kremer on view at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York, develops and expands the concerns of his first work Infected Landscape, which was shown at the gallery in April 2008. Kremer continues to mine the political landscape of Israel as document and metaphor, recalling a long history of military landscape photography that goes back to Roger Fenton, and invokes what has recently come to be termed "the military sublime."

Kremer's work illustrates the poetic landscapes and ruins of Israel—beautiful and aesthetically resonant, yet genuinely engaged with the issues of the transience of civilization and the legitimacy of imperialism. The dramatic images in the show date back to ancient civilizations and up through the recent Palestinian conflicts. As in his earlier work, the images seduce and then return to reality with details like surveillance cameras mounted to ancient sacred walls and jagged debris that resembles abstract sculpture.