Adi Nes believes his new series of photographs, "Biblical Stories," is his best work yet. The exhibition is now showing at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York (www.jackshainman.com), though if not for Nes' legal imbroglio with Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv, that sued him over the rights to his works, the exhibition would probably have been shown first in Israel. In any event, the series will be on display at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv beginning March 16.

Nes' newest series of photographs, four years in the making, shows homeless people (played by models) in the image of biblical heroes. There is something about the huge photographs and the romantic light suffusing them that recalls a Christian approach: Jesus, after all, viewed such downtrodden outcasts as the truly holy people who would inherit the kingdom of heaven. Nes has slung his protagonists back thousands of years with the help of costuming, lighting and backdrops that evoke images from classical art and cinema. The photographs were taken on the streets of Tel Aviv, mostly in and around the Florentin neighborhood.

The result is a singular and riveting interconnection between the ghosts that shaped, and continue to shape, the fate of the Jewish people and the consequences of their actions today. The outcome is gloomy: Noah lies naked and drunk in front of a video rental machine; Ruth and Naomi collect onions from the ground of a refuse-strewn market; Abraham pushes Isaac in a supermarket cart filled with plastic bottles.

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"We are in the midst of great political and social crisis," Nes says. "I felt that if I live and work here, I have to also reflect that situation. I thought about what still remains of my identity and of the identity of the place after everything disintegrates. I usually deal with building a masculine, Israeli identity. This time I decided to deal with people who have lost their identity. During my work on the series I thought that what remains after everything falls apart, the only reason for our existence here, is the link to Judaism. When I finished the project I understood that that, too, is liable to fall apart, so that what remains is something related to humanity, which is also found at the heart of the Bible and Judaism. The result is a series of photographs that talk about human existence, and which address human existence through the narrative we are familiar with from the Bible."

What helps the viewer grasp that these are biblical characters, apart from the titles of the works?

"Beyond the meticulous lighting, I decided to cast models whose appearance will very much bring to mind biblical figures from the history of art or from other classical works. For example, Abel, who is lying on the road, is taken almost exactly from 'Abel' by Rubens. I simply transferred the figure from the painting to the street. The photograph of Ruth and Naomi is based on a connection between the scene from the biblical story and Jean- Francois Millet's "The Gleaners."

"The photograph of Noah is based on a scene that was engraved in my memory years ago, when I was passing by the Cameri Theater and saw Aryeh Schreibman, the half-brother of [documentary filmmaker] David Perlov, lying there naked. It is said of Noah that he lay drunk and naked and sinned by not covering his nakedness. It interested me to present the hero in a demeaned state, and not Noah saving the world. We, the passersby, do not see these people day to day. We do not see them firsthand; we see them through the eyes of the media. I used Noah in order to confront the viewer with the very hard images which exist on the street right before our eyes. I am not making illustrations for stories, but looking for the essence of the heroes."

Nes' photograph "Hagar," showing a woman sitting on steps and turning her gaze to one side, evokes the famous photograph by Dorothea Lange, and not by coincidence. "It is an homage to that photograph," Nes says. "Hagar was expelled by Sarah and Abraham after the birth of Ishmael. She went into the desert and placed Ishmael under a bush. In this photograph I chose to base myself on a familiar image by Lange, which is also about a migrant mother. At the same time, I chose not to add the child to the picture, in order to get the viewer to look for him and ask, 'Where is Ishmael?' I read the biblical text and I comment on it. I present Hagar as a proud woman. True, she has an inferior status, but she is not broken. She preserves some sort of pride and from her a whole nation arises."

Nes notes this is his first time photographing women. Until now, he explains, he has dealt with male identity because he is a male, with Israeli identity because he is Israeli, and with homoerotic identity because he is gay. What prompted him to take an interest in women? "I think I have matured," he says. "But I still do not link the women with the men. They are still strong and alone; they signify the other side."

The trauma

Nes' heroes are Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Yacob and Esau, Joseph, David and Jonathan, Hagar, the prophet Elijah, Job, and Ruth and Naomi. They all have something in common. "All of them have some sort of problem with home," Nes says. "Ruth and Naomi went from one country to another, Joseph was sold from the house of his forefathers, Saul lost the kingdom and Hagar was thrown out of her house."

What does it all mean?

"They are uprooted people. I tried to convey the feeling of a period in transition, and perhaps also my difficulty in attempting to understand the roots that tie me to this place."

Do you have thoughts about leaving?

"No. I made a decision of principle to live here and work here. I travel a great deal. Four weeks ago I delivered a lecture in Nottingham to a Jewish audience, and from there I went on to New York for the opening of the exhibition."

Why a decision of principle?

"Because my family is here, my friends. This is the language and the culture that I grew up in. There are many temptations across the sea. At this point in my career, travel beckons, but I decided that I have it good here. There is also the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation, which chose me and supports all my trips financially."

Nes prefers not to talk about the prices of his works or about sales. His secrecy may have something to do with the ongoing legal wrangle with Dvir Gallery. Some of his photographs were sold to international collectors while he was still working on them, to help with the financing. And some of those now on display in New York will most likely arrive in Israel with a little note saying they belong to one collector or another.

Nes is currently represented by two international galleries - Shainman in New York and Praz Delavallade in Paris - and does not work with any Israeli gallery, in part because of the legal proceedings involving Dvir. This also explains why the series is first being exhibited in a commercial gallery in New York. What about representation in Israel? "After the trauma I went through," he laughs. "When I have something to tell, I will tell it."