Heartbreaking Photos of Fragments of Family Life in Gaza

In the beginning of September, I travelled to Gaza to explore child trauma in the region and take a look at the work being done by charities like Hope and Play and their local partners, the Canaan Institute. This journey took me to mostly residential areas, and it's there that I was shocked to find the levels of destruction that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said in October were "beyond description."

The IDF's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last summer resulted in more than 2,000 deaths and 11,000 injuries. These figures are a shocking reminder that it's always the innocent civilians who get the short end of the stick in conflicts. Whole neighborhoods were razed to the ground and 18,000 houses were destroyed, leaving 108,000 people homeless.

In a place like Gaza, where there is such little security and freedom, the home represents something extremely powerful, an island of normality and peace. A seven-year-old child here has already lived through three wars, making their need for a home more acute than ever.

I wanted to take a series of photographs that portrayed the devastation in a way that people across the world could somehow relate to. I focused on the details of what remained rather than what was destroyed. Fragments of people's lives filled the bomb craters and lined the roadsides of Shuja'iyya and Beit Hanoun—two of Gaza's worst-hit neighborhoods. An iron, a toilet seat, toys, or a glass; I photographed items that are commonly found in households around the world, exactly where they lay, trying not to interfere with the layout.

I felt uncomfortable poking my camera around so much destruction. Many of these homes are now tombs—I saw families desperately picking through the rubble, trying to dig out the bodies of loved ones buried underneath, even weeks after the bombing had stopped.

One family I met was digging into their old home to retrieve some of the presents from their brother's recent wedding. They wanted dignity in death and a proper burial, but there is little dignity in having everything you hold dear destroyed and what remains of your home displayed across the city.

This is why I still feel uncomfortable about these pictures. But had I not been invited in by the families who were picking up the pieces of their lives, I wouldn't have taken them. And if looking at them didn't make me feel uncomfortable, then I guess they would have failed to bring us closer to the devastation, and that ism after all, their purpose.