Amer Nasser in Gaza. Last signals of life

A few dozen people stood between the walls of the Ithaca gallery lined with photographs taken recently in Gaza. The exhibition opening evening, in mid-December, was like any other, but an unusual excitement reigned in this saturated space. The photographs ? Public concern ? The general climate just a few days after the shift in Syria ? Images, eyes, bodies, moods of all kinds collided in an uncertain echo, a chimera. We were in Paris and Gaza, free and cloistered, open and locked in, happy to be there, but falling into an unfathomable night. Who has not seen ad nauseum the Gazan images of this last year? ? Who has not felt their senseless violence ? There, as part of an opening, stuck to the wall, color ink jets without frame, the photographs arranged in a checkerboard excited the neurons strangely, with tiny bites.

For the occasion, Amer Nasser sent a message by WhatsApp. Soft, calm, close voice: « Blessed day, he said, I received a food parcel this morning, with half a kilo of sugar, our dopamine. » Everyone listens and, perhaps out of emotion or an unknown fright, the speech seems parasitic, while Amer Nasser’s voice unfolds a clear, opal sound. « With everything that happens to us, he said, there are still signs of life in Gaza and (my exhibition) bears witness to endless human actions in the most dehumanizing conditions, just to survive. »

Palestinian filmmaker and photographer born in 1991 in Gaza, Amer Nasser has produced and directed films on the life of Palestinians in Gaza. He was a producer for the UNRWA channel, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. Today, he lives in northern Gaza, the part most ravaged by the Israeli army, because everything indicates that it is destined to be annexed to Israeli territory. So many questions then arise: what will happen to Amer Nasser in the coming days? ? And these millions of tons of ruins, to what oblivion are they doomed, in what nightmares and dreams will they end up in the future ?

« All roads lead to destruction »

Among the photographs hanging on the wall, we see a scene a little different from the others because the masses of rubble do not saturate the frame. There is a smiling little girl kissing a white dog. Bright are the eyes of the child, misty and distant those of the animal whose silhouette in the center of the image spreads an immaculate, milky light, one would say generous, notwithstanding the scarlet wound on its back. Two pairs of eyes perfectly aligned on the same vertical, equidistant from a small pair of hands hugging the animal’s neck, as well as a pair of white ears erect, alert. These two heads, so perfectly and naturally collected, this small rectangle occupying a congruent portion of the frame, cross the space in the most astonishing and wild way, to signify precisely what on the other side of the checkpoints we have forgotten: the strength and enthusiasm to live in the worst conditions. On the other side, we are strong, fulfilled, but always lurking in the complaint of misfortune.

There is also another photograph, All roads lead to destruction in Gaza (All roads lead to destruction in Gaza) an avenue in ruins, which recalls others, Aleppo, Hiroshima, Dresden and Berlin, Verdun… Some captions attached to the images resort to grotesquery or farce, such as Samples of Interior Designs for the Israeli Army in Gaza (Interior design model for the Israeli army in Gaza), or Gaza Military Parade (Military parade in Gaza), showing bags of flour located inside a school for displaced people. They remind us that derision to the point of caricature arises in the most tragic situations, to save us. « These ruins with bright colors, slips me a friend, produce a disconcerting effect. » Photography is often embarrassing, sticky even, in that it attempts to give form and reason to what is aberrant, if not elusive. Should we thank her or hold it against her? ?

What can we say about these jagged masses, these mineral slurries, captured by a smartphone, transmitted using a long pole, held at arm’s length, to capture a bit of the network? ? All these photographs transmitted to Paris via internet, to be pulled thousands of kilometers away from the chaos that saw them born. How difficult it is to separate these images from the actions that give rise to them. That it is an almost elusive block, produced by vile concrete aggregates, a bundle of crazy and loving signs, nourished by a rare energy, which crosses space, the cosmos, at the speed of light ? That they are filled with an overwhelming melancholy about the decomposition of the world which we know is our horizon, the destiny chosen by current political leaders to remain in history ? That this clash is a haloed, transfigured madness, made to protect itself from a murderous dementia ? Should we be ashamed, faced with these images, of still being safe, or of being made of the same flesh as the executioners? ? You have to listen to Amer Nasser: wherever you are, give signs of life, of deep attachment…

« An attempt to remember »

Amer Nasser sometimes finds himself possessed by a righteous melancholy, as in the exhibition press release:

Since October 2023, equipped with what I have left of the war in Gaza – my camera – I have been looking for the last signals of life, which I send to the world, as best I can, so that one day, maybe someone can testify that there was life in Gaza […] My camera captures the death of the moment, but also the life that takes over. Each image bears witness to instantaneous moments, efforts to (sur)live, to continue one’s journey, to invent alternative means of escaping death. It is an attempt to remember, even though forgetting was a blessing in the past life.

Forget documentary and fiction films, screenings at the Dubai or Alexandria film festivals, programming at the Arab World Institute in Paris, film projects with his brothers Arab & Tarzan Nasser, whose next he is writing movie, Once Upon a Time in Gaza (2025) ? No question at the moment.

Amer Nasser sometimes groans. A few months ago in the Swiss newspaper The Courier, he testified:

I think if I were a painter and I started working on a piece since October 7, with a sea, a sky and a bird flying in the middle, it would not be finished by now […] Many production companies lost their equipment, burned by the army. Those working in the arts are now searching for food parcels and queuing for food and water, with no time to indulge in art scenes. They don’t have time because they have children and families waiting for them¹.

Sigh Bitter, if your life demands it, your voice lives in us !