Armed with my camera, documenting life as a refugee

With the end of 2024, I have completed my 9th year of a spectacular learning journey with 52Frames, an online platform which makes you pick up your camera each week, and shoot. With life as a refugee in my own land this entire year, the challenges have been one of the constants in a life of inconsistency and instability. Without a routine, or even a framework of a routine, fulfilling my weekly challenge, regardless of where I was in the world, helped me not only remain grounded and focused, but it also gave me an additional opportunity each week to tell the world the truth of our lives here in Israel, on the border, in a war zone, through my photography.

Week 1 2024 self-portrait. For the past few years, I have been doing my “New Year’s self-portrait” on the island in my kitchen. This year, since my home is now a war zone, and I am a refugee in my own land, a 3 hour drive away, I didn’t believe I would get a chance to keep up the tradition. However when I found that I had an opportunity to get home for a few hours, I decided to bring my camera and tripod and give it a try. Usually I agonize over the self portrait for hours, with multiple retakes, checking them on my computer and redoing. This time I had neither the time nor the computer to do so. I decided that an appropriate prop would be my flag, and I would add it to my project of photographing people from my kibbutz in b&w, and turning it back into color when we can move back home. Hopefully, soon.

One of the few things I DID know, was that by 7 am every Monday morning Israel time (midnight EST) I needed to post my weekly challenge. The challenges kept me focussed on how I could take my weekly picture in a way that would tell my story; our stories. This year more than ever, telling the stories of the people in my community, my region, my country, still reeling from the October 7th massacres, is important. Showing my life through the lens of  my camera, the program has helped me tell the story of a country at war and people who canot go home because their homes are not yet safe. It has enabled me to tell stories of peole I lost, of dreams that have been shattered and of new ones which we – as human nature is wont to do – have been struggling to rebuild.

Week 4: A Scene from a Movie
“ I wish it were only a movie ”
This little guy is one of the few things from this family’s home that remains seemingly unscathed by the destruction. He sits in the now abandoned garden of a family whose home was invaded by bloodthirsty terrorists on October 7th. Their home was burnt to the ground, as the young parents held down the handle on the door to the saferoom, preventing the monsters from slaughtering them. The parents, the grandma and the 10 day old baby, all inside the room for hours as the fire raged on the other side of the door sending deadly smoke through the cracks, survived. They are safe and their baby is plump and jolly, as unscathed and oblivious as this garden duck seems to be, to the destruction that surrounds it. This movie had a happy ending. Tragically, many stories of October 7th, did not.

I want to thank the people in my mini-group who help me not only choose which shot to use, but help me figure out how to improve and inspire me to always improve.  I am thankful to Bari for introducing me to the program back in 2016 when I bought my first digital DSLR camera.  I am grateful for Karen Feldman who inspired me in the middle of this past year, to use this platform to widen the spotlight on our hostages, adding an additional note to each submission, raising the plights of the 100 hostages still wallowing in the darkness of the terror tunnels of Gaza. I know way too many of these innocent citizens who are neighbors, friends, former students,  personally. If I managed to personalize their plights to even one person who viewed my challenges – to help remind the world that they are still waiting for us to #BringThemHome, I am comforted. I am beholden to Yosef Adest for beginning this group and taking me, along with its thousands of participants, on this photographc educational expedition.

Week 30: Water
“ Water… not something to be taken for granted ”
I live in Israel, in a kibbutz on the border with the Gaza Strip. I have friends, neighbors, former students, aquaintences who are still being held hostage in the bowels of Gaza. When I think of “water” I remember the testimonies given by those who returned. They tell about a lack of fresh drinking water and days in which they are given only a date to eat. Or a quarter of a pita. This is my picture for “Water”, taken on October 295th, 2023. Because we are all still fossilized back in October when our lives turned upside down. Bring them all home. Or more accurately: Let My People Go

May my 2025 album be filled with joyous photography of my favorite subjects: my grandchildren. (May they continue to agree to be my photography models!) Hoping for endless opportunities to digitally document my community moving back home; our lives on Nirim rebuilt, revived, restored and thriving once again, with the sounds of children’s laughter replacing today’s distant – and not so distant, explosions, returning sanity to my life.

My entire year of challenges can be seen on my 52 Frames Profile or in my 52 Frames Album on Facebook

Week 45: Fill the Frame
“ FIlling the frame and filling the hole ”
They say that a people with a sickle and a sword, are a people who are here to stay. The Communal garden is a years’ long tradition on my kibbutz, and we took the opportunity to gather our families together at home (where we cannot come back to live because it is still considered a closed military zome) to replant it. Since October 7th, 2023 I have been on Nirim almost every week to take potential donors and journalists around. Every time I go there, it seems more and more like the home I have known for the past 50 years, but for one thing: the sounds of children. Finally, on day 400 of our exile, 400 days since our friends, relatives and neighbors were kidnapped & murdered, since we have been exiles in our own land, children’s laughter filled the air. They came to plant the future.