Faces in Search of Meaning

This series of photographs captures children during the Israeli assault on Gaza, their faces reflecting both innocence and bewilderment. Each portrait stands as an open question: What is happening around them? Their expressions reveal fear, anxiety, and sleeplessness, while their simple answers all circle back to one desire: returning to their classroom and their home.

For me, photographing these children invoked a moment of deep realization: how a child lives through war by searching for answers that never arrive. In these weary faces, we see children pushed into roles far beyond their age, one waiting in line at a soup kitchen, another trying to sell whatever he can, a third carrying water containers heavier than his body. Meanwhile, they endure malnutrition, unsafe shelters, the cold of winter, and skin diseases in the heat of summer, all while being separated from school.

These expressions speak louder than the fleeting images circulating on social media. They are not momentary glimpses, but enduring signs of a stolen childhood, of meaning taking shape in their eyes even before the camera can capture it.