Photography Projects in New South WalesPhotography Projects in New South WalesChildren of Nakba Day
These photographs were taken on May 15, 2025, during a Nakba Day gathering in Beirut, Lebanon.
Below the hill, Palestinian activists, refugees, and Hezbollah supporters stood shoulder to shoulder, delivering speeches filled with grief, defiance, and memories of a conflict that has shaped generations. Flags waved above the crowd as speakers vowed solidarity and resistance.
Yet a short walk away, the atmosphere felt entirely different.
There, I met children.
Their clothes were worn. Some carried the visible marks of hardship. Many had grown up surrounded by stories of displacement, war, and loss. Yet what stayed with me was not anger, but curiosity. They gathered around me, asking where I came from. Using a translation app, we struggled through fragments of conversation, laughing at misunderstandings and finding small ways to connect.
They waved Palestinian flags just like the adults below. But unlike the speeches echoing through the crowd, their faces still carried something unmistakably childlike: wonder, playfulness, and hope.
As a writer and documentary photographer, I am often drawn to places defined by conflict. What interests me, however, is not only the conflict itself, but the ordinary human moments that continue to exist within it. These children reminded me that even in communities shaped by historical trauma, life does not pause. Childhood persists.
For a brief moment, above the chants and politics, they were simply children smiling at a stranger with a camera. From the ruins of Beirut to the elephant villages of Nepal, my work is driven by the same question: how do ordinary people live with forces larger than themselves? In Chitwan, those forces happened to weigh five tons and carry a trunk.
In 2024, I joined an international volunteer program in Chitwan, Nepal, where I spent weeks living alongside rescued elephants and the families who care for them. What began as a wildlife experience soon became a human story.
Through documentary photography and field reporting, I explored the complex relationship between elephants and the people whose lives are inseparable from them—mahouts who have dedicated decades to a single animal, young caretakers navigating economic hardship, and local communities caught between conservation, tradition, and survival.
My work documented moments of tenderness and loss alike: the quiet bond between a mahout and his elephant, the daily routines behind sanctuary life, and the funeral ceremony of an elephant whose death drew an entire community into mourning.
Rather than portraying wildlife in isolation, this project examines the emotional, cultural, and ethical realities that exist where humans and animals share the same world. The resulting photographs and written narratives form part of my ongoing documentary work focused on people living at the intersection of history, conflict, environment, and social change.
