The October 7 War

On the morning of October 7, life turned into one long, single day. Since that dramatic Saturday, I have been in a race to document the war and to tell a story bigger than all of us. Because after such inconceivable events, I think that without authentic  documentation, we could one day struggle to believe that this happened, that in 2023, the State of Israel experienced the most dramatic tales of horror and heroism since the Holocaust.

From that terrible morning until now, with the war still raging, I’ve been taking pictures day after day, some might say obsessively, out of a deep sense of mission – a  combination of journalistic drive, historical perspective, and love for the country. I document what is happening with the understanding that this is different from anything I have photographed before; that this is one of the most difficult, complex, and emotional periods we have experienced since the establishment of the state; and that it is imperative to tell this extreme story as accurately and reliably as possible.

It is no coincidence that the phrase “I’d rather be honest than impressive” is tattooed on my arm.cWe live in an era in which the use of editing software and artificial intelligence capabilities allows for easy manipulation and engineering of consciousness, causing people to lose the ability to distinguish between reality and illusion. In such a world, the importance of objective and reliable journalistic documentation committed to ethics, history, and truth is paramount.

This mission is exhausting, not only because of the need to be wherever needed – even under fire andcin life-threatening situations – but because after five months of war, I, too, am scarred by what I have experienced. On a personal level, I lost 15 friends and children of friends that cursed Saturday. I’ve documented atrocities in the Gaza Envelope communities, and I’ve interviewed warriors, wounded soldiers, survivors of the Nova festival, and rescue forces – all of them seared by trauma.

I’ve seen tragedy before. I photographed mass graves in Bucha, Ukraine; in Haiti, Nepal, and Turkey, I documented the horrors of earthquakes. But here, in Beeri and Nachal Oz, in Kfar Aza, and at the site of the Nova music festival, the images I captured are more than just destruction; they are the embodiment of horror. Over and over again, I collected evidence of unimaginable cruelty and the pure evil of human monsters – a clash of civilizations in every sense of the word.

Yet during these months, I have also experienced quite a few moving – even thrilling – moments. I’ve had the privilege of meeting with many of our wonderful soldiers who are bravely risking their lives and with civilian heroes who have faced incredible hardships: the courageous Mia Shem, who returned from Hamas captivity; Gali Segal and Ben Binyamin, an engaged couple who both lost their right legs at the Nova festival; Dr. Elai Hogeg Golan, who together with her husband Ariel saved their daughter Yael at the cost of severe burns. I’ve been privileged to tell so many stories. And yet, in this horrific cataclysm that began on October 7 and is still ongoing, so many stories have still not been told. Indeed, some will never be told.

We live in such a visually documented age that it is easy to mistakenly think that what was not photographed did not happen. The events of October 7 are a national nightmare, parts of which will remain a kind of black hole. So many stories, tragedies, and human dramas occurred simultaneously on that dark day and were not  photographed. The 400 photos chosen for the book out of the hundreds
of thousands I took during these months are the “presence” that represents the “absence,” a reflection of the inherent failure to be everywhere at the same time, to document everything at every moment.

That’s why I’ve made the unusual choice to dedicate space to those photographs that no one captured. To pay respect to some of those thousands of fateful moments that went undocumented and to the heroes of those moments. “The Photos Not Taken,” which concludes the book, is the monument I wish to erect in honor of those who were there and in memory of those who are no longer with us. For me, as a photographer who has had the privilege of documenting some of the most dramatic events in the world over the past 30 years, this is also a moment of bowing my head in the face of a reality stronger than all of us. A moment of humility.