In Gaza, the camera lens does not merely capture a scene. It documents the human spirit resisting death. And for Gaza’s photographers, every shutter click is an act of defiance. Each image carries risk, memory, and moral weight. They photograph through smoke and mourning, through hunger and destruction, and through the ache of watching the people they love become the subjects of their work.

Throughout the Israeli genocide, Gaza’s photographers have become archivists of loss and of life. Their pictures are records of a genocidal war, but they are something more, too—they are fragments of Gaza itself, windows into our collective soul. Through their eyes, we see not only death and devastation, but dignity, defiance, and love that refuses to die.

Late last year, The Nation asked eight photographers from Gaza to choose one picture from the recent past that carried particular significance for them, and to tell us why they’d picked it, when and where it was taken, and what story it tells. This is what they returned with.
 

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“This one broke me”: Samer Abo Samra

Samer Abo Samra, 27, is a freelance photographer. He took this photo on October 29, 2025, at 8:00 am outside the morgue at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex following a “massacre that occurred during the Israeli occupation’s breach of the truce that killed about 100 civilians—mostly children and women.”

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In the photo, a grieving father, Mahmoud Shakshak, bids farewell to his children—Sara and Fadi—who were just killed in an Israeli air strike. He was kissing Sara’s foot when Abo Samra took the picture.

“The screams, the disbelief—it was unbearable,” Abo Samra told The Nation. “The father whispered: ‘Last night I bathed you, dressed you in new clothes… Fadi, you wore your Spider-Man shirt… you were so happy. You’ve gone now to a better world. I’ll never see you again.’”

“That scene killed me,” Abo Samra said. “I felt like the camera was crying, and I felt helpless. I’ve captured many powerful images during the genocide—displacement, destruction—but this one broke me.”

For Abo Samra, the photo is a testament to the “betrayal of a ‘truce’ that was supposed to protect people,” but instead became a cover for a massacre. “It’s a cry from Gaza to the world,” he said. “These children weren’t numbers. They were joy, laughter, and love, stolen from their father’s hands.”
 

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“This child will never see his own reflection again”: Anas Fteiha

Anas Fteiha, 31, is a photographer for Anadolu Agency. On March 19, 2025, he took this picture of Mohammad Hijazi, a 7-year-old from Jabalia who had fled south with his family during the genocide. While playing outside, Hijazi came across an unexploded remnant of war. It detonated. One of his eyes had to be removed; the other no longer sees.

“When I took his picture, I realized—this child will never see his own reflection again,” Fteiha says. “It was the first time I photographed someone who had lost his sight completely.”

He remembers his trembling hands as he focused the camera. “He smiled at the sound of the shutter,” Fteiha recalls. “He thought I was taking his picture so he could ‘see it later.’ That broke me.”

“We take sight for granted. For Mohammad, the world is now forever dark and colorless. But his courage is the brightest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
 

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“Her eyes looked like someone reborn”:
Khames Al-Refi

Khames Al-Refi, 23, is a freelance photographer for Anadolu Agency. On September 16, 2025, he followed Gaza’s civil defense crews to a collapsed house in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City. Beneath the rubble was 10-year-old Mayar Al-Wahidi.

Her father had been killed a week earlier. Her mother had just been martyred in the strike that destroyed the house. But Mayar emerged covered in dust, silent, alive.

“From 2 am until 8 am, they dug,” Al-Refi recalled to The Nation. “When they pulled Mayar out alive, her eyes looked like someone reborn.”

“I’d never crawled under debris before,” Al-Refi said. “At that moment, I wasn’t a journalist—I was part of the rescue.” He stayed with Mayar in the hospital afterward, unable to detach emotionally. “She felt like family,” he said softly. “I still have her number.”
 

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“She asked me to document her story”:
Moatasem Abu Aser

Moatasem Abu Aser, 30, is a documentary filmmaker and photographer. “I chose this photo because behind it lies a vast story—about the violation of women’s rights in Gaza and the layered suffering they endure,” he said.

He met the woman in this photo by accident on September 11, 2025, near Al-Samer Junction in central Gaza. She had just given birth to twins while living with her mother-in-law and other children on a sidewalk, under a torn tarp, which was attacked by stray dogs at night.

“She asked me to document her story,” Abu Aser told The Nation. “She hadn’t eaten or drunk in days when she was pregnant. One of her newborn twins died of starvation.”

The image shows her exhausted, eyes hollow, holding her surviving baby.

“When I saw her, I felt powerless,” Abu Aser said. “I couldn’t offer food or shelter. I could only capture her truth. She is like our mothers, our sisters. Her suffering speaks for every woman who bears the cost of genocide and survival.”
 

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“It was the battle between annihilation and survival”: Mohammed Al-Aswad

Mohammed Al-Aswad, 28, is a freelance photographer. “I chose this image,” he said, “because it captures the essence of life clinging to existence amid devastation during the genocide.”

The photo was taken in November 2023 in the Beit Lahia area, moments after a heavy bombardment. It shows an ambulance racing toward Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Jabalia.

“The air was thick with dust and fear,” Al-Aswad recalled. “The drones were still buzzing above, and the roads were choked with debris. Every step felt like a gamble with death—but I knew I had to capture that moment. It was the battle between annihilation and survival.”

Looking through his lens, Al-Aswad saw more than chaos; he saw defiance. “The ambulance cutting through destruction—it was life fighting to exist,” he said. “That image is my reminder that even under the weight of genocide, humanity refuses to die.”
 

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“It was the strangest joy”: Suhail Nassar

Suhail Nassar, 30, took this picture, which he called “The Great Return to Gaza,” on January 27, 2025, days after the first extended ceasefire with Israel had been declared.

“It wasn’t just a photograph,” he told The Nation. “It was a statement. A collective heartbeat returning home.”

Nassar had returned to his destroyed house in Gaza City with his brother. Around them, survivors embraced and cried amid shattered concrete and silent streets.

“It was the strangest joy,” he said. “We weren’t afraid. We felt as if our souls had finally reunited with the land. Every breath was nostalgia—every ruin, a memory.”

Though Nassar said returning to his home “was the best feeling of my life,” the day was still marked by sadness. “When I stood there, I could almost hear the voices of friends we’d lost. The happiness was pierced by their absence. The city was still wounded.”
 

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“I was starving too”: Omar El-Qattaa

Omar El-Qattaa, 35, is a photographer for Agence France-Presse. He took this picture on April 23, 2024, in the Al-Mokhabarat Towers area in Northern Gaza, at the peak of the Israeli-induced famine. It captures a swarm of desperate civilians chasing food dropped from the sky.

“It was a picture of humiliation,” El-Qattaa said. “People fighting over bags thrown from airplanes—like crumbs for birds…there was no aid, no food, nothing but air-drops. I watched people run, fall, hit each other—just to feed their children.”

El-Qattaa was not simply an uninterested observer. “I was starving too, unable to secure food for my children,” he recalled. “That day, someone shared biscuits with me for them.”
 

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“Each shot felt like betrayal”: Omar Ashtawy

Omar Ashtawy, 21, is a photographer for APAimages and a freelancer with Reuters, UPI, and the DPA Picture Alliance. He took this photo on May 14, 2025, in Jabalia. It shows a crowd with outstretched hands, metal bowls gleaming in the dust.

“I chose this photo because it captures human pain in its rawest form,” he said. “It was not just people holding empty pots and hungry—it was about dignity.”

Dust filled the air; people ran with bowls, lids, or anything that could hold a portion of food. Ashtawy stood among them, the camera feeling unbearably heavy. “I was weak, dizzy from hunger like everyone else,” he said. “The cries of children echoed in my head. Each shot felt like betrayal—I was recording pain I shared.”

Ashtawy felt the weight of the camera as “a tool carrying a responsibility greater than my ability.”

“I felt anger,” he said. “Anger at a world that lets people beg for life. But I also felt a duty to show the truth before it disappears.”