This Sheet Is Mine
24 beds, 365 days a year, 90 days of stay, 450 children,6 rooms
And yet, it all narrows down to a single bed.
One child. One story.
As part of my volunteer work at the Makom Acher (Another Place) youth shelter, I encountered dozens of residents, each carrying a world of stories — all of which eventually converged into one small, private space: a bed.
During my time there, I found myself drawn to observing how each individual defined their personal space — intimately and instinctively — within a public and often transitional environment.
These observations sparked a series of questions:
What is private space?What role does it play in shaping identity, safety, and belonging?
And how do we define and protect it, especially when we have so little to work with?
I discovered that in such a setting — and perhaps in life — the bed becomes the sole anchor of personal territory.
More than a place to rest, it is where belonging is claimed, identity affirmed, and privacy negotiated.
And at the heart of that space, often, lies a single item: the sheet.
As a photographer, this experience shifted my perspective.
Where the lens often creates distance, here it allowed for intimacy.
It did not conceal — it revealed.
It brought me closer to their skin, and perhaps to mine as well.
We, as humans, have a deep need to draw boundaries, to belong, to make space our own —
even if only for a short time.
And so, we assign meaning to the smallest of things,
turning the mundane into a marker of identity,
and the temporary into a kind of home.
“This sheet is mine.”
A simple sentence.
But within it lies an entire world.
