The Gaza Project

This particular project was made in response to me and my family's four years' sojourn in the Gaza strip, and specifically the war that took place in the summer of 2014 that so directly and dramatically affected our lives. Our neighborhood ended up being behind the front lines, and we left hurriedly in the middle of the most intense fighting. We returned 6 weeks later to find our home a standing ruin; the roof collapsed, refrigerator-sized holes in the walls, two stories burnt out on one side, the entire house pockmarked by thousands upon thousands of bullet holes and shrapnel, my two children's new bedrooms unrecognizable. Everywhere in Gaza are equal parts beauty and damage, hope and resignation, and mostly, light and dark-- both the physical and allegorical kinds. We go up to 18 hours a day without electricity, and there is a preoccupation by everyone, with light. Where are the candles in the house, go buy candles, go get the handheld desk lights, we got an extra 2 hours of electricity yesterday(!), and so on. I find myself also preoccupied with light of the natural and spiritual kind; I’m always looking for photographic metaphors of hope and illumination. In these images I address the uneasiness and scars left in our home, and in us, in the war's aftermath, the push to make life normal, even beautiful, and the constant search for light.