Opinion | A Palestinian Photographer’s Lens on His People - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/palestinians-photography-war-israel.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20240120
As I got older and developed my practice, I noticed a dissonance between the West’s conception of Palestinian society and the images I was making — the life I was living. In the news media, Palestinians were often portrayed as masked and violent or as disposable and lifeless: a faceless, miserable people.
On the one hand, this type of photography documents the brutal reality of Israel’s indiscriminate violence in Gaza. But it also makes it easier for the viewer to see Palestinians as silhouettes who have always been this way instead of as people with entire lives, histories and dreams.
When images like these become the dominant depiction of a people, preconceptions become embedded in the minds of those who view them. In the case of the Palestinians, these insidious representations have paved the way for Israel’s wanton destruction of Gaza, for which Israel is now facing accusations of genocide in the international community’s highest court. In the context of violence and destruction, inflicting more violence and destruction becomes routine.
Adam Rouhana is a Palestinian American photographer. He took these images in Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalandia, Isfiya, Huwara, Ramallah, Battir, Nablus and Jerusalem from 2021 to 2023.