‘Why I Hung Up My Camera’ — Humans of Jerusalem

“I used to be a photojournalist. I don’t take pictures anymore, not really. Because nothing’s changed, it all became the same, the same photos of politicians’ handshakes, starving African children, refugees in camps. Over and over and over again. My work didn’t make one bit of a difference. And that’s what every photographer, on some level, is trying to do. That’s our mission as photojournalists. We’re not there to passively gaze on and snap a few pictures. We are trying to bring about a change. And over time, when that change just wouldn’t come, I hung up the camera”.

I was there with my camera and I didn’t take a single picture. I remember running out of that apartment entrance for about thirty seconds, just to take a quick look around, and while I was taking a look around — I was at the corner, the actual intersection where Ben Yehuda intersects with Ben Hillel — I see the remains of one of the suicide bombers, and it was the torso and up. It was very surreal, because the torso had landed on the ground as if it was upright. And the head was tilted back, mouth open, as if he was screaming. And roughly 3 or 4 meters away from that half was the other half of the body.

There was total silence. What was very eerie is when I get to the building entrance, and I’m looking towards Ben Yehuda street now, I see this woman, a young woman, couldn’t have been more than 18, and she’s crying, clutching her handbag, it was dead silence, but she’s clutching her handbag, and rather than running out of the area, she was briskly tiptoeing out, as though she were wearing high-heeled shoes, but she wasn’t. And the only thing I heard was her sobs, as she’s tiptoeing away from the scene. It was really weird.

That was one of the scariest days of my life. It was the one day that the camera did not act as a shield for me. Because when I would arrive on the scene and photograph all these terror attacks, people ask me “How can you do that? Does it bother you, to see all that?” And I explain that my camera is my shield. I am there, taking pictures, and I am focusing on my job, and the camera acts as my shield protecting you from the gravity of the situation. You only understand and realize when you get home and you upload your images, and you go, “Oh my God! I was just there!”. And that’s when you reach for the whiskey.”