Working in tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson but forging his own acutely receptive style, Wolberg is on a perpetual lookout for the “decisive moment” in which a telling encounter, an impending or just missed contact between people or their open confrontation disclose crucial nuances of individual as well as collective identity.  The subject at hand may be harrowing or apparently banal, for example, mounted Israeli policemen dispersing an angry crowd of militant Israeli settlers or two Palestinian men carrying a model of the Mosque of Omar down the road behind an Israeli tank. Or, without any photographic manipulation on Wolberg’s part, the image may look almost surreal.  Take, for instance, a couple walking on the sidewalk in ballet tuts with the broad-backed man in drag shouldering an automatic rifle on a sling. Or, consider, a boy standing in the middle of the street in a bright orange and red party outfit resembling a rooster next to whom a fully armed soldier in a helmet and dull khakis takes cover behind a concrete roadblock. The uncanny shift upon which both pictures hinge pinpoints the discrepancy between normality of one kind – the sexual playfulness of young adults, a child completely absorbed by his own fantasy - and the “normality” of ever-present menace and unceasing vigilance. In short, lives conducted in the sun-blasted Middle Eastern shadow of death.

Robert Storr