From Photo Kegham to Unmute Gaza

An Archive of Resistance

Abstract

“If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”

Refaat Alareer, Gaza

These were the final words of Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet who died in an Israeli air strike in northern Gaza on 6 December 2023. Since then, the dominant media coverage has been saturated with Western perspectives on the matter, while Palestinian voices have had to navigate censorship, blockade, and skewed reporting. This photo essay explores photographs emerging from Gaza as tools for creating counter-narratives, and in the process, birthing an abstract archive that shifts the agency typically associated with a curated photographic repository. This photo essay focuses on the efforts of independent artists, journalists, and organizations, who are capturing the realities of this conflict—often in real time—not relying on mainstream media to curate and display a narrative coloured by political interests. This is not to claim that photographs being uploaded to the social media pages of conscientious citizens and independent journalists are devoid of politics; rather, they are imbued with a politics that lets them exercise the agency of their own narrative. The essay focuses on photographs that have shifted from documenting the violence of the war to documenting life within the war, and thereby creating an ‘abstract archive’ containing the “Gaza Experience.” We demonstrate how this archive has the potential to serve as a tool for advocacy by making the truth visible. The essay investigates how this photographic archive is a form of resistance in a situation where people’s very existence is at stake. It shows how Palestinians attempt to cling to what is left of their identity in the face of collective destruction.