Memories and nightmares: Life through a Gaza photographer’s lens

On a windy day fifteen years ago, Mahmoud Abu Hamda clicked his shutter to capture a photograph of seagulls in flight over a dark, rough Mediterranean sea in Gaza—his cherished first shot with his first camera when he was 19.

Yet, one dated October 6, 2023, of a festive sight of fishermen at work during an abundant fishing season at the Gaza Port remains hidden away in his collection.

For years, the 34-year-old Palestinian photographer, once based in Gaza City, had looked at the bright and cheerful side of life through his lens – bringing to the world the daily life of his community and the beauty of Gaza in vibrant colours. But October 7 changed everything.

“It feels pointless (now),” Hamda tells TRT World.

The death and destruction heaped by Israel over nearly ten months have turned Gaza into a dystopian wasteland of mass graves, twisted metal and concrete rubble.

“It leaves me with a sense of sorrow because I captured those (beautiful) moments… and (now) it leaves people with sorrow because all of that has changed and become a thing of the past, in a way that it has really become the past,” he adds.

Over the course of its genocidal war, Israel has killed more than 38,000 people, including a generation of Palestinians who pursued the creative arts–poets, writers, artists, et al.

Hamda is lucky to be alive. He has now made it his mission to tell the world about Gaza’s misery through photographs of the war, which he shares on social media.

Life amid war

Gaza, like all other Palestinian lands, has been under siege by the Israeli state for decades now, and the people are virtually prisoners in their homeland.

But still, life was not so grim before Israel launched aerial strikes and a ground invasion in response to Hamas’s cross-border operation.

A day in the life of Hamda generally involved teaching at the University of Gaza City and capturing the beauty of Gaza through his photography.

His work focused on landscapes, portraits, and food, presenting the Palestinian enclave in a light often unseen by the world —a place of enchantment and hidden beauty.

“I aimed to show people a different perspective of Gaza, one they weren't accustomed to seeing, and I can say that I succeeded in presenting Gaza in an enchanting way to the world,” he reflects.

Hamda discovered his passion for photography in his teenage years, honing his craft through consistent experimentation over the years –composition, light and shade and subjects.

He began with a small pocket camera, the Canon A580. Now, he uses the much more advanced Canon R6, which helps him shoot professional-quality photographs.

Later, when he became a lecturer at the university, he began passing his skills to his students.

October 7, too, had dawned bright, and Hamda was looking forward to giving his first lecture to a batch of new students.

But even before he made it to the university, Israel launched what would become one of the most indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian populations in recent history.

He rushed home and packed only the essentials: some legal documents, his laptop and camera, perhaps the most precious possession he owned. Then, he found a car and drove off with his wife and children.

“We left behind everything at our home, even our clothes, taking only what we were wearing,” Mahmoud says, adding that his biggest regret was departing too quickly, without taking anything else from his house that would carry its memory, unaware that in the months that followed, homesickness would become a fixed state.

His neighbourhood, named al Remal, ended up becoming one of the first areas destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on October 9. That was the first of the three times he was displaced.

In search of safety, he initially moved to his family’s house in Nuseirat, about 8 km south of Gaza City.

He is now back in the same place after having spent three months sheltering in a tent in Rafah in between until Israeli forces issued orders for the residents to leave the area they once declared a safe zone.

“When we returned, many houses on our street were destroyed. The devastation grew worse each time we returned,” he says.

“We returned to our home, but there was partial damage inside. The whole street was filled with destroyed houses. Every time I stepped out onto the street and visited any area, the scenes of destruction brought back memories of the same pain, over and over again.”

Death, up close

The entire time he was displaced, Hamda kept documenting life in Gaza, capturing images as well as videos of death and destruction – smoke spiralling up from bombed-out buildings, panic-stricken people in tents and cooking on the street, weary faces of tired people, and sometimes of smiling children, too innocent to understand what is going on around them.

Some of the photographs are poignant, some haunting.

One is of a group of displaced children caught up in a carefree game of pat-a-cake. As they stand lined up beside a clothesline, their shadows on the ground create a mesmerising silhouette that captures the unity of their hands meeting in the air.

"After eight months of war, I realised that the meaning of life is greater than the meaning of death,” Mahmoud wrote as he shared the shot on his Instagram.

Another captures a group of visibly fatigued child refugees huddled around a fire, one of them holding a bottle to another’s lips to assist in drinking.

Yet another shows a young girl, extending an empty plate, standing behind a fence among a throng of starving refugees awaiting food from a soup kitchen.

A powerful portrait captures the woeful gaze of another Palestinian girl, staring directly into the lens, with a teardrop streaming down the corner of her left eye.

Although scenes of sorrow had been many, some moments stuck with Hamad more than others.

“Today, my connection with the camera has completely shifted. Now, I see death, destruction, and even the food I once enjoyed photographing in a grim and distressing light.”

Despite the war showing no signs of ending, he remains optimistic, like in pre-war photographs.

“War and destruction are not new to Gaza,” he says, although he acknowledges that this time it is somewhat severe.

The photographer has full faith in the day when the enclave would rise from its ashes, just as Palestinians “had done every time”.

“Hope remains as long as there are people who breathe and live and as long as there are people who love life like us,” he says.

“We will rebuild Gaza, and I will return to practising my love for photography on the beach and in all the places I love. Life does not stop at these events.”