Fatma Hassona, photographer of daily life in Gaza, knew that her death was inevitable

« My camera is my weapon, my bullets are memory cards. » Photographer Fatma Hassona saw those cards as her way of protecting herself, to show the world what happened to herself and others in Gaza. « With this weapon I defend myself and make sure that my family is not forgotten. »

She tells it in an interview With Quds News, a Palestinian broadcaster for young people, just after eleven of her relatives died at an Israeli air raid in January of 2024. Last Wednesday Hassona was killed-also at an Israeli air raid on her house in Gaza city. Along with Hassona, nine of her family members were killed.

Since October 7, 2023 documented Hassona The reality of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip: people who walk between destroyed buildings, who use carpets to cover the broken windows of their houses, the broken facade of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City-photos they ply on her Instagram page, accompanied by So from Hans Zimmer.

But she also showed how the daily life of Palestinians continues. With a portrait of the potter that glazes through his bombing between the bombing. Boys playing football on the street, women who look out the window at the sunset, a visit to the market. Smiling people who returned to their houses in the north of the Gaza Strip during the file with Israel.

Hassona is called ‘The Eye of Gaza’ in reports about her death – the one who saw everything in a place where journalists are scarce. Because Israel does not allow foreign reporters to report, and because it is perilous work for journalists in the Gaza Strip. Since October 2023, more than one hundred and seventy journalists died in Gaza. The photos she took came on her own social media channels, but also in international media including The Guardian justifiably.

Documentary on Cannes

Photos that Hassona shared on her Instagram page shows something of her own life before October 7, 2023. She shares portraits of family members, of the weddings and engagement that she already photographed as a young woman. How she reads a book on the campus of a technical college in Gaza city where she studied. She shared photos of her graduation, in July 2023.

She retains her personal approach when she suddenly becomes a war photographer. In May 2024 she places a video made on the roof of her house, a place where she always liked. « I was here among the many beautiful buildings and green areas that gave my eyes peace. Today I am sitting around me and everywhere is destroying. The green has become gray, but that’s okay. I can sit down as long as my soul is here, » she writes.

Hassona is the subject of the documentary Put your soul on your hand and walk from the French Iranian director Sepideh Farsi. A day before Hassona’s death, Farsi called her with the news that the film at the film festival in Cannes would be shown in May. The documentary is based on video calls between Farsi and Hassona, in which the photographer shows what her life in Gaza looks like.

Marriage in April

During their last phone call, Farsi Hassona had invited to come to Cannes, she told Thursday at the American news site Deadline. « She said, » I want to come, but I have to go back to Gaza. I don’t want to leave Gaza.  » When the Israeli army had instructed the residents of the north of the Gaza Strip to evacuate, Hassona had refused to leave.

Farsi tells about Hassona’s sister, who was pregnant. « Two days ago she showed me her belly in a video call. » The documentary maker says that Hassona had engaged a few months ago. She would get married at the end of April.

The Israeli army says that Hassona’s house was bombed because there was a Hamas member. « Nonsense, » says Farsi. « It’s completely untrue. I knew the whole family. »

On her Facebook page, in which she wrote diary pieces about friends, passages about death in her photos of relatives crying, Hassona also wrote about her own death last summer, « who is inevitable ». « When I die, I want a noisy death, » it says. « I don’t want to be a news flash, or a song in a group. I want a death whose world will hear, an estate that will continue to exist forever – that the passing of time cannot bury my photos. »

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