On October 7, 2024, Chen Schimmel was huddled in a shelter with her family as sirens blared overhead when her brother burst in, phone in hand, yelling, “Dead soldiers. Bodies. Dead soldiers. Bodies everywhere.”
At the time, no one could understand how what he was saying could be true. But as the day unfolded, the scale of the Hamas massacre became clear. Schimmel’s brothers, all soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, left to serve their country. That same day, or the following one, Schimmel understood her own role.
“I knew exactly that that’s their duty, and my duty was to document whatever was happening,” she said.
In the days immediately following the attack, getting permission to travel south to the devastated kibbutzim was not easy. But Schimmel’s father, who volunteered with ZAKA, had access, and she asked to join him. That decision marked the beginning of a journey that would lead to two years of documenting both tragedy and hope in Israel since October 7.
“In those first few days that I documented in Be’eri, [one of the hardest-hit kibbutzim], I went back a few times,” Schimmel recalled in a recent interview on the ILTV Podcast. “There was no resilience, there was no light, and there was no hope. It was really just the darkest that you could even imagine. But as I went back each time, the birds were singing, or there was a little patch of grass that I noticed had suddenly started to regrow. Or even the natural light coming through the windows. Each time, the pain doesn’t fade, but there’s healing.”
As time passed, her focus expanded. She moved from documenting the kibbutzim to photographing the soldiers serving there, then the evacuees displaced by the war, and eventually the hostages and their families.
One photograph she highlighted is titled “God’s Ray and Buckets.” It shows family members returning to a home that had been completely burned by terrorists. Seven members of that family were dragged out through a window and taken hostage. All have since returned home.
“Cousins of the family had come back to search through what remained, the ash and the rubble, anything that was left,” Schimmel said. “I was photographing the darkness of it and the smoke. Then, while I was photographing, you see this beam of light coming through the window and kind of like a spotlight on them and what they were doing.”
Schimmel said she is constantly “chasing light” as a photographer and does not use a flash. When she saw the contrast between light and darkness, she took the photo.
“That photograph is really a complete embodiment of this entire book and of our people,” she said. “It’s really finding the light in the darkness, and as a people, that’s what we do. That’s how we’re able to grow and keep moving forward.”
Watch these previous podcasts:
There were many deeply moving moments throughout her documentation, including the first time she photographed Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the hostages murdered in Gaza. In August, shortly after they learned of their son’s death, Schimmel approached them to do a photo shoot.
“I have never been so nervous to photograph something in my life, ever,” Schimmel told ILTV. “I remember feeling so nauseous and not knowing how to approach it. But I met them, and immediately I felt this calm.”
She said the couple was kind and gentle, as they appear in all their interviews, but that Rachel seemed more nervous than usual.
“She wasn’t feeling too comfortable that day. She was fidgeting and wasn’t really sure,” Schimmel said. “She said, ‘I need you to help me, to tell me how to stand.’”
Schimmel told her to stand how she felt, and Rachel fell into her husband’s arms.
“Her resilience is like no other, but also that need to fall into each other, which is also what we do as a people,” Schimmel said. “That moment and that photograph have stayed with me.”
Schimmel said her work has taught her about strength and that strength does not necessarily mean endurance or powering through. Sometimes, she said, it means falling and being lifted by someone else.
“That’s the way in which we heal,” Schimmel concluded. “It’s about falling, but it’s about getting up again. It’s the most human thing.”
Watch the full conversation: