The Digital Journalist has long been one of my favourite on-line photo magazines, published by a real pro, Dirck Halstead (who shot his first war for LIFE when he was 17) and running some of the best features on photojournalism, if just occasionally the perspective does seem a little too aggressively USAmerican. So although the latest February issue is dominated by a recent event in Washington (about which I’d like to keep decently silent), I was pleased to find that Dispatches contains four essays from Gaza, with a note about them by Marianne Fulton, who curated many fine exhibitions in her 27 years at George Eastman House in Rochester and edits this section.
Jim Hollander has worked as a photographer since the 1970s, covering Israel since 1983; chief photographer in the area for Reuters from 1985, he now holds a similar position in EPA. His contribution deals with the total lack of cooperation – almost at times amounting to open conflict – that photographers received from the IDF. He finishes by saying that in the “23 days of misgivings and misturst we were not allowed to get even close to a soldier to see how this war was waged.” You can see more of his phtoography on the Hollander artists family web site.
Unable to get into Gaza, Israeli freelance Ilan Mizrahi photographed the effects of the Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel. It’s a story that should be told, and although of course on a different magnitude compared to what was happening in Gaza, traumatic for those closely affected. More of his work on his own site.
Ahmad Khateib lives and works in Gaza and his four pictures, two of funerals, one of a young boy in the rubble and another of homes destroyed by Israeli bombing have a greater immediacy. He was not just there and close enough, but as he says an actual target: “I am not lying about the Israeli army when I say that they know where journalists live and work and they hit the housing and offices of the international news agencies and Arabic ones.”
Greek photographer Stefania Mizara has worked with many NGOs and she managed to get into Gaza with a group of doctors on Jan 12. Her pictures too capture something of what was happening; relatives waiting desperately at the hospital, relief supplies in the UN building in Gaza City burning after being bombarded with white phosphorus bombs, a child whose house has been destroyed and graffiti left by Israeli soldiers. You can see some of her pictures from Kosovo here and a more varied selection of work on Lightstalkers.