Remains from Gaza

This post first appeared on VICE Germany

In the beginning of September, I travelled to Gaza to explore child trauma in the region, and 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 described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon as “beyond description”.

The IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza this last summer resulted in more than 2,000 deaths, and a further 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.
This 51-day war seems to have been the worst of the three most recent wars between Palestine and Israel. In Gaza, whole neighbourhoods were raised to the ground and 18,000 homes destroyed, leaving 108,000 people homeless.

What this really represents is a loss of security in a region that lies on a knife’s edge already. The home is a cherished place; where there is such little security and freedom, the home represents something much more powerful. It becomes a place of freedom and solace. If a 7-year-old child has already lived through three wars, their need for a home is now greater than ever.

I wanted to take a series of photographs that portrayed the devastation of these homes 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 Suja’iyya and Beit Hanoun – two of Gaza’s worst-hit neighbourhoods. 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 anymore than in the way I cropped my image.

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

One family I met were digging into their old home to try and 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 around me, 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 is after all their purpose.