Accessible Approach

Palestine Street in Dubai. Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. Palestine Hospital in Cairo. Palestine, Texas. Cyper Palestine. In German speaking countries there are Palästinensertücher (Keffaya headscarves). Down the street, Palestinian Specialties are served. Eating Palestine. Breathing Palestine. Palestinian History. Dreaming Palestine. Thinking Palestine.
 

part of Madaba Map: Ashkelon, Gaza, Negev, part of Sinai
the original Madaba Map depicting Palestine approx. 550 AD is part of the floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church St.George in Madaba, Jordan

Mapping memories: 

Northern Gaza

In the garden surrounding the newly built house of my friends we shared the first ripe peach. Laughter and excited voices of hundreds of schoolchildren exceeded the roaring and screeching of the wild animals in the zoo of Gaza City.  

Northern Gaza

With photographers and video artists, from around and about, we grilled fish on the beach somewhere along the coast. Under a print of Picasso’s Guernica we sipped maramayya with a Gazan painter/theater director and an illustrator working mainly for children books.  

Panorama view over Gaza near Karni Crossing from Al-Mintar, the highest spot in Gaza, overlooking ……

..... farmland ....

Nisreen, writing reports for an international organisation, was never too tired to conjure up an excellent vegetarian maqluba (Palestinian rice casserole, served upside down) for me. Then eight-year-old Anat wanted to play city-country-river (children’s word game) rather than doing her homework.  

... the city ...

Her fifteen-year-old cousin took me out to do the shopping together. She was proud to protect me. Joumna, a social worker, proposed to have our cappuccinos on the seaside terrace of Al-Deira Hotel.  

... the Mediterranean ...

An architect and furniture designer has started to concentrate on producing furniture for international clients; a trade and export Gaza always was famous for …… and … there are many more stories….

 

... remains of a bombed TV-Station in 2002 ...

I hear myself thinking sentences. Fragments. Words I read in books, heard in films. Expressed by those in camps, wars, captivity. And by those standing nearby. Now some of these sentences are mine. Too. 

Tiles from Isfahan in the Blue Mosque in Cairo, 2003

Looking for missing pieces.
The canvas remains empty.
Silent walls. Flowers hide their magic. Low sky.
 

Photographer: Nick Ut Cong Huynh, Vietnam, The Associated Press. Trangbang, South Vietnam, 8 June 1972. Phan Thi Kim Phuc (center) flees from the scene where South Vietnamese planes have mistakenly dropped napalm – my first image of war.

The discourse on photographic depiction implodes in my brain. Where to hide from the avalanche of images? How do you deal with reality?
Images in my head. Images collected in Gaza in 2005 and 2006. Wanting to see life. Browsing my archive. I never thought I would show these images. Somehow I felt ashamed having them, these digitized moments, digitized indignity, taken from a distance.

“Kikeriki!” in the middle of the night – from where? From the roof of the nearby hotel in Cairo?The kikeriki was transmitted via the live streaming into the dark sleeplessness. A rooster in Gaza, mistaking shell lit skies for day break.

Compiling these files is an attempt to structure different perspectives on this place and beyond ......

words and photography by Rayelle Niemann, 2008/2005


 

FEATURED THEME ON CITY SHARING

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