Picture Balata
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Sabreen is one of nine kids between the ages of 11 and 18 who’ve spent the last year working with Picture Balata, a Chicago-based organization that teaches them to use cameras to document life in the camp. Earlier this month she and two other participants, 15-year-old Hadil and 16-year-old Taha, talked about their experiences at the opening of an exhibition of their photography at Acme Art Works. They were in the U.S. for the first time, as part of a two-week tour that also took them to New York, D.C., Pittsburgh, Boston, and San Francisco.
Cassel went to the West Bank for the first time in 2003, with a delegation sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Group in Chicago. Then a Columbia College photography student, he arranged to meet with journalists who’d covered the conflict for the Associated Press and the New York Times. He was disheartened to learn that most of them only commuted to the Palestinian territories on assignment. “There’s a quote I’ve heard a lot of times from journalists: ‘Everyone loves working in Israel-Palestine, because you can cover a war in the morning and be at the beach in the afternoon,’” he says.
One of the major themes Cassel and Farraj emphasized in their workshops was the portrayal of Palestinians in the international media and the need to present a different perspective on life in the camps. In artist statements included with their online galleries (viewable at picturebalata.net), the kids explain why they chose specific subjects: Sabreen wanted to depict women and young girls outside, “working to build this society and taking care of our families and struggling against occupation.” Taha takes pictures of cabbies because a lot of young people, including himself, “don’t have work, and they have to work as drivers.” Hadil decided to photograph empty streets because kids have a tendency to smile or pose for the camera despite how they actually feel. “But the streets,” she says, “they can’t lie.” Images of martyrs frequently appear: family members pose with framed posters of young men, armed and defiant, or hold up photos of infants who died in the cross fire.
