Love and Other Bad Habits:
Unmasking the Most Intimate Feminine Moments
Writer: Meital Dohan
Photographer: Karen Gillerman-Harel

This stimulating new book Love and Other Bad Habits exhibits a rare tapestry of feminine identity. Dohan and Gillerman-Harel juxtapose visual text with narrative pictures exposing the side effects of love and moments not spoken.

The book contains texts and photos showing women removing their masks. The Israeli figures, both Jewish and Arab, expose themselves, forming an intriguing outline of feminine solidarity of body and mind.

Much of this book is about defiance, irony, the immortalization of feminine beauty, the conflict between the different roles of women in the modern world, and the expectations they need to meet. However, the book also contains optimism and hope, which emerge in the not-so-glorious and less pleasant moments of love. With their words and pictures, Dohan and Gillerman-Harel attempt to create a new feminine "self" - one that represents both fantasy and reality, removing the outer layers and showing the true life concealed underneath.

The original Hebrew edition was published in Israel in July 2007, and is already out in its second edition, while generating considerable interest both in Israel and in the U.S.

At present the book is also for sale at the renowned Upper East Side Manhattan bookstore on 82nd & Madison Avenue, Crawford Doyle, which is frequented by well-known authors for book signings (including Philip Roth, Joan Didion and others), displayed amongst the exclusively selected books from D.H.Lawrence classics, Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Khaled Khossaini (The Kite Runner), to Michael Crichton bestsellers, and more.

Meital Dohan, an acclaimed Israeli actress, (nominated for two Israeli Academy Awards), recently starred opposite Sebastian Roché in Amos Kollek's (Fast Women Fast Food) film called L.L. Her American television work includes a groundbreaking role as Yael Hoffman on the hit Showtime series Weeds. Meital Dohan has also written several plays, which have been performed in Israel and New York as well. Among them are Love and Sex in the Holy Days and the critically acclaimed New York production of Bath Party. She currently works in New York, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv.

Karen Gillerman-Harel is an artistic photographer whose work has been featured in well-known New York galleries and in exhibitions throughout the world. Among such venues are the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Andy Warhol Factory, the Stephan Stux Gallery, and the Chelsea Museum.