I've taken a new interest in portraiture after spending some time with photographer Asim Rafiqui in Gaza last winter. Asim and I were working together on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can see our project page here. We each wanted to do something different than what our fellow journalists were doing in the aftermath of Israel's winter offensive against Hamas—Asim as a photographer, and I as a writer. We were working on more long-term, subjective projects, and we were interested in showing more than destruction and immediate suffering. Not to say that destruction and suffering aren't worthy subjects; rather, we knew that our peers in the foreign media were covering those aspects of Operation Cast Lead's aftermath extensively, and we knew our grant afforded us the opportunity to approach our subjects with a bit more intimacy.
Asim shoots black and white photos with two vintage Leica M7 cameras. He has a masterful eye for light, and he knows how to put his subjects at ease with one or two simple words and gestures. Watching Asim work with his subjects was like a live workshop. The beauty of portrait photography, I learned, is that you can put a little bit of yourself in every portrait, but you never have to put words in anyone's mouth. All you have to do is fill the frame with the humanity inches from your lens, and if you do it right, the picture says it all.
I'm not claiming I do it right yet, but I'm trying to learn. I look through my photos from Gaza and Egypt pretty often, and from Montana and Virginia too, and I never get tired of looking for new phrases in the wonderful stories that faces tell.
Here are three of the portraits I took in Gaza last winter. I'll post more soon.
Asim shoots black and white photos with two vintage Leica M7 cameras. He has a masterful eye for light, and he knows how to put his subjects at ease with one or two simple words and gestures. Watching Asim work with his subjects was like a live workshop. The beauty of portrait photography, I learned, is that you can put a little bit of yourself in every portrait, but you never have to put words in anyone's mouth. All you have to do is fill the frame with the humanity inches from your lens, and if you do it right, the picture says it all.
I'm not claiming I do it right yet, but I'm trying to learn. I look through my photos from Gaza and Egypt pretty often, and from Montana and Virginia too, and I never get tired of looking for new phrases in the wonderful stories that faces tell.
Here are three of the portraits I took in Gaza last winter. I'll post more soon.
Ahmed Hussein, 65, Jabalia
Gazan girlscout, Gaza City
Waaji Imsalaam, 70, Jabalia
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