Serial No. 3817131 - Desperately Perfect

Born in Ohio but raised in Israel, Rachel Papo found herself serving as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force at the age of 18 for two years during her mandatory military service. Papo had experienced first hand being “plucked from her home surroundings and placed in a rigorous institution where her individuality is temporarily forced aside in the name of nationalism” as she describes it in her artist's statement. The project is titled Serial No. 3817131 from the author's own military service.

Paz waiting for the bus, Northern Israel, 2006
Dana, sniper instructor, outside her room, Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi, 2005 Michal, on the train going home, Tel Aviv, 2006 Look-out duty at the observation tower, Tsaelim, 2005

In her second series, Desperately Perfect, Papo finds a commonality between the young women of the Israeli army and the girls of the renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. The grace and sophistication of the young ballerinas is evident even in a still photograph.
Although living in different worlds, both the Israeli soldiers and the Russian ballerinas are faced with a predetermined vision of femininity and place. At pivotal points in their lives, each is placing a sense of nationalism above personal identity.