Exhibit seeks to show good and bad in Gazan children's lives
Photos show the full range of daily life for Palestinian children in the Strip; 'We wanted to remind people that behind numbers are human beings… and stories of children,' says organizer.
Pictures of children line the walls: Some with big grins on their faces, others with tears welling in their eyes. Many of the kids, both the happy and the sad, carry visible injuries or are missing limbs.
All of the photographs make up the “Children of Palestine Beyond Numbers” exhibit, a collection of the works of four photographers who have spent time capturing the lives of young Palestinians. Many of the images were taken during Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip last summer.
“The media normally talk about numbers and mass generic words – Palestinians, West Bankers, Gazans,” Eloise Bollack, one of the photographers and the organizer of the exhibit, told The Media Line.
“We wanted to remind people that behind numbers are human beings… and stories of children.” Bollack, a Parisian journalist who has worked in Israel and Palestine for the last four years said that she felt the exhibition was necessary to humanize Palestinians, and Gazan children in particular. “It’s important to remind (people) that a child is a child no matter which side of the wall he is on.”
Bollack explained the balance the organizers sought, avoiding an overabundance of images of death and suffering on one hand and only happy children at play on the other. The intent of the collection was to present pictures demonstrating the full range of daily life for Palestinian children, including, “hard, realistic, graphic photos, but also pictures of kids who will always keep smiling.”
The exhibition is being held at the Yabous Cultural Center in east Jerusalem and was organized by the US-based Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), which works with children who require medical treatment.
“Our main feature is medical work and boosting the capabilities of local doctors’ capacities to do surgeries,” Dr. Selitcia Adeeb, the vice-president of operations for the charity, told The Media Line.
Many of the photographs in the exhibition featured children who had undergone surgery through the efforts of PCRF. When it is able to do so, the group arranges for children with severe medical conditions beyond the scope of Palestinian medical facilities to be taken for treatment abroad, Adeeb said.
“What is new about this exhibition is the participation of the children in choosing the angle (of the camera) on their daily lives and world,” Abdelazeez Noman, one of the journalists who contributed to the collection, told The Media Line.
Several of the photographs in the gallery were taken by Gazan children themselves. “I relied on the children and made them blend their personal lives and the life of the photographer at the same moment,” said Noman, who is originally from Gaza.
An example of this was a photograph taken of a young Gazan boy, Moa'ath Abu Thaher, standing on a beach with kites flying overhead. Moa’ath leans on a crutch to support himself as his right leg is amputated above the knee. But the image was not taken by a professional journalist, but by the boy’s younger brother, Ibtesam.
When asked, Eloise Bollack, who in addition to her work as a photojournalist works for PCRF, concedes that certain people might be cynical towards an exhibition which depicts the plight of Palestinian children during last summer’s war but ignores the suffering of Israeli kids living under endless rocket fire.
“These kids don’t mean that all Palestinians are beautiful – like there are no bad people in Palestine or people that undermine peace efforts. But I don’t think that this is propaganda, this is just showing one side of the reality.”
Article written by Robert Swift
Reprinted with permission from The Media Line
