The terrible cost of reporting on the Israel-Hamas war from Palestine is brought home at Tagore Theatre’s staircase landing where two boards display mugshots of journalists killed in the line of duty.
The casualties include four Al Jazeera journalists killed in a strike on a tent outside the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in August. The caption in Malayalam translates to ‘A big salute to brave media martyrs of Gaza.’
Upstairs are more devastating and moving images that convey the horrors of what the people of Palestine are experiencing since the Israeli military began strikes on Gaza. Images that have been taken by brave journalists amid dangerous conditions.
The photo exhibition ‘Salute Gaza’ that is being held as part of the International Media Festival of Kerala (IMFK), organised by the Kerala Media Academy, is a document of the cruelty of war, the suffering and loss it inflicts, but also of life and resilience amid the rubble.
Perhaps more haunting than the images of the dead are those of the living, barely. Children with their bones sticking out because of starvation, their faces haunting, just angles without any of the customary chubbiness.
Grief is like a shroud in the photographs. Entire families wiped out, the living inconsolable in their shared grief as they mourn babies, the young, and the old, all covered with white sheets.
The wounds are many, physical and emotional. A boy who lost both arms, a journalist who lost five family members, an anguished mother holding on to her child like life itself, a man sitting in an armchair outside a destroyed building, a little boy trying to comprehend the enormity of the devastation.
The scale of the destruction is enormous. Fire and smoke emanating after airstrikes, rubble from destroyed structures, cavernous holes in the ground, everything a ghostly grey.
There are images of the Palestinians scrambling for scant food, containers in hand; of trudging with sacks of flour after trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed to enter.
Photos show displaced Palestinians forced to flee with whatever they can but they also show them returning home in the hope of a future, of a life.
Published – September 29, 2025 11:35 pm IST
