Gaza Seen By Its Children: Asmaa Seba’s amazing photography project

Imagine a traumatized child, whose spirit has been damaged by the horrors of war. Many such children exist in Gaza, especially after the 2008-2009 massive military onslaught upon the people by the Zionist state, which poured out bombs, white phosphorous and depleted uranium over a civilian population. A child that has seen the unimaginable happening right in front of his or her eyes, having become a spirit locked up inside itself. Can we still reach out to this person, through all the pain and misery?

Photographer Asmaa Seba El Mourabiti found a unique way to enable these children to express themselves, with quite impressive and inspiring results. What follows here is Doc Jazz‘s exclusive interview with her, in which she explains her methods, motivations, and aspirations.

Doc Jazz: Has your Gaza experience had an influence on you? For example, has it affected your view of the conflict, or your approach to photography?

 

Asmaa Seba: The first time i came to Gaza was in 2009-2010. I was the official photographer for a Belgian delegation who was rallying an international humanitarian convoy whose aim was to bring medical supplies and school supplies, so to be honest i was coming to visit Gaza for just a week and to see by myself all the things i was reading in the media in Belgium, so let’s say that my first experience with Gaza didn’t imply photography.

But when I saw the reality on the ground, when I spoke to people there and especially psychologists and teachers, I realized I could do more than just witness the chaos with my camera and instead I decided to come back for a longer period and use my skills as a photographer to do something for the children. This is how I decided to start the project  “Gaza seen by its children”. The idea was to let the children express themselves trough photography.

Our European media at that time (during “Operation Cast Lead”) were focusing on the so-called ‘right’ of Israel to defend it self from the rockets fired from the Gaza strip. They were never shedding light on the huge psychological damages the children were exposed to because of the occupation and the blockade. So yes, my first trip there made me realize how the Zionists’ propaganda was created to mislead Western countries about the fact that Gaza is the biggest open air prison, and that 1.7 million civilians are being held there, and massacred at any time.

What’s the main philosophy behind the idea of using photography as a way for the children to express themselves? Is it effective, and if so, why do you think it works?

Photography has always been a tool to express feelings whether anger, happiness or hopes and dreams, I experienced myself when I was an angry teenager.

Most of the children I worked with (3 boys, 3 girls aged from 6 to 11), have lost their parents or a family member and have witnessed it, so they have trouble speaking and expressing themselves, and have a lot of psychological troubles.

The challenge was first to convince the families to let me spend time with the children, since I’m a stranger to them, a foreigner and not a psychologist. I had to get close to the children, get to know them better and share things with them before starting to work with them.

So the idea was first to spend as much time as I could with them. I was living with the families, each week  I was with a different family. Once trust was established between the children and I, I started to give them workshops of photography. Each one of them received a camera (I brought 6 cameras with me), they had to keep it all the time, and I made them understand that the camera had to become like a “friend” to them. Some children were even sleeping with it in their hands, like something you cherish so much you don’t want to let anyone touch it.

After one month of “training”, we decided with the psychologist and the teacher who worked with me to give them subjects to shoot to help them focusing on things around them.

We first started with common subjects like school, friends, the sea etc, then I decided to ask them to take pictures of the environment they were living in, and of how they spend their time in the refugee camp, and what they do there.

I started to notice that the pictures they were bringing back were a way to express their sadness living there, as all the pictures were depicting only the grey walls, the garbage and nothing else. So I decided to take one step forward and asked them to put into image the subject of family. That was the most difficult part for them, as they brought back only a few pictures, and for 2 of them nothing.

The idea then for the psychologist was to work with them on that subject, and after some time, Walla who lost both of her parents and 3 sisters and brothers and had witnessed it (she and her brother were the only survival of the bombings attacks) came back with pictures of her brother praying at their parent’s grave and she asked me to go with her the next week. I went with her and she started talking about how she was missing her mom, and cried. It was the first time I was seeing her cry, she’s 7 years old and acted like a mother to her little brother …

Mutassim who saw an Israeli sniper shooting at his dad, mother and brother, came back with a picture of a big portraits he detached from his sleeping room and that showed his parents and his brother. He is the only child who never said a word since I was working with him. He then told me he decided to take the portraits off the wall, because by taking pictures of his family he couldn’t have a shot about them as they were dead, and that he realized at that moment that they would never come back to hug him. It’s at that moment that I truly believed that my work as a photographer was effective and helped them just talk about their emotions. It was a wonderful and painful moment, the hardest one for me there.

Under what category would you describe your work to fall: activism, art or therapy?

I use my skills as a photographer to testify about what I see around me. I truly believe that an image can be more powerful to raise awareness than any other form of  expression. I always try to do it with an esthetic touch to avoid clichés, the subjects I try to work on are sometimes very sensitive, like my first exhibition that focused on the homeless in big cities. From the beginning, I have wanted the public to feel the dignity and the humanity in the portraits, and not only the poverty and the sadness.

Regarding therapy trough photography, I saw in Gaza how effective it was, and I encourage any photographer who works in the social-humanitarian field to use it, especially for children for whom it’s more difficult to express feelings with words.

What has been the public’s response to your project? Is there any response that stands out in particular? Did you get any negative reactions?

The exhibition traveled from Belgium to Turkey, Jordan, Spain, Algeria, France and Germany. It was a huge success, a lot of parents came with their children.

It’s a testimony that avoids clichés and also avoids politics and religion, in order to put the child at the center of the story, and let viewers see what it is like to be a child in that troubled place.

The exhibition is an original work; it’s the first time the public can see Gaza trough a child’s perspective. People were touched by the fact that the children whom I worked with could go beyond their suffering and testify about their daily life, and share with us their hopes and dreams.

What is also amazing, is that people in Europe responded by asking a lot of questions about the blockade and the occupation. Most of them didn’t know much about the Palestinian plight, because of the silence in mainstream media. They came because they were touched by the fact that the exhibition is a work done by the children. The pictures are their view of Gaza, not mine as a foreigner, it’s their daily life struggle.

The only negative reactions came from Pro-Zionists groups in France who told me that I should also go to Tel Aviv and work with the children traumatized by rockets fired from Gaza.

Well, they are the ones who should ask Israel to allow me in, since I‘m a persona non grata and I was deported from Ben Gurion Airport after a couple of days inside a cell.

Do you have plans to do something like this again? Is there anything you would change in your approach if you would repeat it?

I plan to go back to Gaza and continue the workshops with the psychologists who collaborated with me, they convinced me to come back and give the opportunity to more children to participate.
This time I would like to get parents or families more involved in the therapy. I speak the language better now and also I understand the mentality better. It will be also better for the child to see his/entourage following his/her efforts.

Do you feel that photography is unique in being able to achieve the aims that you are hoping for? Are there other approaches that you also support or believe in?

Photography helps me to get closer to people no matter where I go. It also helps me take some distance from the world I’m living in.

To be a good photographer, knowing how to use a camera, is not enough. If you focus only on the esthetic aspect, you loose a chance to understand what you see. You need to be open-minded and accept to deal with feelings that come to you. These can sometimes be anger and frustrations, but also joy and hope.

You can never judge a subject. Photography is not an aim in itself, it’s a method. What matters is how you treat the subjects you choose. I always try to do it with humanity and love.

I have a lot of respect for artists who decide to stand openly against Israeli Apartheid. It’s not an easy task, especially in Europe, where talking about the Palestinians’ rights to their land and freedom is still a taboo because of the Holocaust and the guilt we Europeans feel towards the Jewish people.

Art in all its aspects, from music to cinema and literature, is a tremendous weapon of education. It gathers and reaches people regardless of their gender, religion, culture or even political views.

I also truly believe in the BDS campaign, that is a non-violent campaign that raises awareness against Israel’s continuous crimes against the Palestinian indigenous people.

Do you have any hopes, aspirations or ideas for your approach that would increase its effectiveness or its scope?

My hope is that the blockade and the occupation will end, so that I can travel to Palestine and see the children enjoying their childhood like any children in the world, building their future and not worrying about the everyday struggle.

I wish that more psychologists could endorse the method, and use it with the children they need to follow. I hope to be able to get the possibility to work with children at a larger scale. I could only work and follow  6 children, but next time I hope to enlarge the number. For that, I need more funds and more time, traveling to Gaza means not working  here in Brussels, and like any one I need to pay my bills. My projects are always sponsored by my family, colleagues and friends, it’s the only way for me to keep my work independent .

Is there anything you have learned from this unique experience that would be of benefit to other photographers, and that you would like to share with them?

The only advice I would give to any artist, especially those who never went to Palestine, is to forget everything they hear or see on mainstream media, and go on the ground to meet the incredibly courageous, warm, and welcoming population. Also, to respect the will of the Palestinians to struggle the way they can and not tell them how to resist. I see so many foreign artists going to Gaza with a certain “Western behavior” of knowing better than Palestinians what they need.

One thing that bothered me a lot and shocked me the first time I came to Gaza in 2010, was the attitude of some journalists and photographers searching so hard to get scoop pictures, like masked brigades, to portray Gaza as a center of terrorism, or focusing on little girls wearing hijab to be able to sell it to their magazines and show the population of Gaza as fundamentalist. It is morally wrong, and total propaganda, to put a shadow on the real issue, which is the occupation and the blockade.

 

It has been a pleasure to interview Asmaa about her impressive project. The humaneness of it, the psychological genius of it, and the effectiveness of it, serve as a landmark example of how to use art and skills for a good purpose. I am thankful to Asmaa for giving me an opportunity to interview her, and I am also thankful for the wonderful things she has done in Gaza. I wish her lots of luck and success, and I am sure you have also been inspired by reading this interview. Naturally, you want some more, and therefore I invite you to watch this video here below, which brings you even closer to this amazing project – Doc Jazz.