Rehaf Batniji

Artist - From Palestine, lives and works in Gaza. Images - Courtesy of the artist. Writer - Adapted from texts by Elisa Routa and Emma Warburton

Rehaf Batniji: Gaza, bright and beautiful The streets have the power to represent the culture of a country, both the bright and dark sides, and photography has the power to do the same. Merging the two together to form a conceptual framework, Rehaf Batniji has developed a unique and personal language in the genre of street photography. Using parks, plazas, sidewalks, beaches and public spaces as her medium, the artist illustrates in pictures her most intimate vision of Gaza.

A native Palestinian, Batniji has witnessed three major conflicts. In 2008, during the first, she documented her life with a cellphone. While a second massive conflict peaked in 2012, she captured scenes through the window of her studio with a digital camera. Finally, in 2014, she documented the war during occasional cease-fires.

With refreshing positivity, Batniji’s photographs reject this brutal imagery, and instead use color as a tool for resistance to excavate the vibrant aspects of life in Gaza. Her photos observe the landscape, and the beauty found in its relationship to the people populating it. Using a traditional approach to documentary photography, it is implied that Batniji’s work is imbued with social purpose. Rehaf Batniji is a self-taught photographer based in Gaza.

Al Batniji is a self-taught photographer based in Gaza City, Palestine. She currently works for the Nawa for Culture and Arts Association as a public relations officer, where she is responsible for the photographic and video documentation of all events, activities and projects. She also provides training to adolescents learning the art of photography. In her own practise, Al Batniji is interested in street photography, as she feels the street is a portal by which she learns about lives, cultures, communities and identities of the people who dwell in her city. Batniji dreams of establishing a photography school for talented and passionate aspiring photographers - an outlet for students to freely express themselves in a region experiencing perpetual political, social and cultural decline. To date, she has produced two significant photobased projects, the first entitled Road Works, and the second Al-Khidr Monastery Restoration Photography Book. @ rehaf_batniji

Corners from the series Things Bigger than the State of Isreal (2012)

Photo Rag paper, 40 x 60 cm

Adjacent, from the series Street is Life (2018) Photo Rag paper, 40 x 60 cm

Untitled (2018)

Untitled, gaza strip (2018)