CrossFireArabia
By Ibrahim Isam
I am not one of those who wear a press vest or a helmet simply to convince people outside Gaza that I am a journalist working under unbearable pressure and therefore in need of help. Nor am I someone who chases trends merely to increase the number of followers, or someone who uses photographs as a means to achieve personal ends.
Since I began photographing, I have had my own visual language, my own way of seeing. What has happened in Gaza has never made me abandon that language in order to follow the tragedy or turn it into a commodity.
I have never searched for the angle that would sell better, nor for the scene that would bring sympathy faster.
And I am certainly not one of those who see a photograph receiving attention today, only to return the next day with the same subject, the same tragedy, but with the latest camera model or the most expensive equipment—as if human suffering needs a technological upgrade before it becomes worthy of being photographed.
I am not ashamed of my modest cameras. Quite the opposite. I sometimes deliberately photograph myself with them and show exactly what kind of camera I am using.
Perhaps because I want to tell those who are just beginning to explore photography something simple:
The eye matters more than the camera.
A camera can be newer, more expensive, more sophisticated, and more impressive. But none of that makes its owner an artist.
And honestly, if cameras were capable of making artists, camera shops would have become art academies long ago.
I did not translate my texts into English because I wanted to flatter people outside Gaza, nor because I wanted to make myself more acceptable to an audience that does not know me.
I translated them because I want the photograph to travel.
I want the story to cross borders.
I want people to see what I see.
And the photographs I share today are not photographs I suddenly discovered after Gaza became a subject of global attention.
They are the same photographs I shared before, accompanied by Arabic texts, when they did not reach the same number of people, when they did not receive the same attention, and when hardly anyone seemed to notice them.
The photographs did not change.
The world simply began to look.
Nor am I seeking personal gain through these photographs.
I believe you all know that I am perhaps one of the few people in Gaza who continues to work voluntarily, without belonging to any institution or organization, using my own camera and whatever resources I can manage to provide myself.
But there is something even more important to me than all of that:
I do not impose a manufactured tragedy upon a child in order to create a powerful photograph.
I do not ask a child to cry at the right moment, to look into the lens in a way that makes the image more “tragic,” or to rearrange their pain so that it becomes more suitable for publication.
I believe that reality, when left to speak for itself, is far more painful than anything we could manufacture.
A child in a photograph may deserve all the compassion in the world. But when we place that child inside an artificial scene, or subject their reality to poor and exaggerated direction, we do not serve the child, and we do not serve the photograph.
We weaken its credibility.
And more important than anything else:
I respect the viewer.
I respect their eyes, their intelligence, and their right to see reality as it is—not as I want to stage it for them.
Some of you may wonder why I am writing all of this in English when I am, after all, speaking to you.
The answer is very simple:
Because I know you are curious.
And I have a feeling that, sooner or later, you will translate this into Arabic anyway.
So, in a small way, we have saved everyone the trouble.
In the end, I do not claim to possess the whole truth, nor do I believe I am better than anyone else.
I simply know why I hold a camera.
I know why I press the shutter.
And I know why, sometimes, I refuse to take the photograph that others believe would be “the best” one.
Because art, to me, is not a competition over who owns the biggest camera, the newest equipment, or the photograph that receives the most attention.
Art is knowing when to photograph, what to say, and when to step aside and allow reality to speak for
itself.
