Tasweer - shining new light on the Arab World
In April 2025 I was invited by Qatar Museums to the launch of the Qatar Creates/Spring – Summer 2025 season, incorporating the third edition of the Tasweer Photo Biennale.
The first exhibition I encountered at Tasweer offered a powerful statement of intent, particularly given the current wall of silence by Western media commentators and cultural organisations around the Israeli state’s illegal occupation of Palestine and their unremitting violence towards its people. Especially poignant in the week that 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna was killed by an Israeli missile strike, Obliteration: Surviving the Inferno, Gaza's Battle for Existence is a timely and deeply moving photographic installation in the Katara Cultural Village.
Obliteration: Surviving the Inferno, Gaza's Battle for Existence
The installation features a selection of images by photojournalists from and still living and working in Gaza, who remain nameless, and focuses on the resilience of the Palestinian people in the most hideous circumstances. You feel their pain and suffering, but you also recognise their strength in adversity. The exhibition unfolds in five powerful stages, each capturing a phase of the terrifying war on Gaza. It traces its escalation over the past 18 months, following the genocidal assault launched by the Israeli occupation army on the civilians of Gaza after the Hamas’ attack of 7 October 2023. Each stage serves as powerful visual documentation, bearing witness to the unfolding tragedy on the ground. The images and accompanying texts aim to guide the viewer through the relentless devastation, urging a deeper understanding of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a catastrophe happening before the eyes of a paralysed world.
Images: Shadi Nael Al-Tabatiby
By way of contrast, in Gaza's Horizon: From Life's Colours to the Ashes of Conflict Palestinian photographer Shadi Nael Al-Tabatiby uses drones to document from the air how Gaza's waterfront urban landscape is rapidly changing as a result of Israel’s endless bombardments, those areas of Palestine which Donald Trump described as "an incredible piece of important real estate" that America would like to develop after the war.