Samar Abu Elouf and yasmine eid-sabbagh will revisit Samar’s photographs and writing from over the past decade in Gaza, as well as her most recent work in exile in Doha, Qatar.
They will discuss how the courage and endurance of media workers in and from Gaza are laying the basis for justice to come.
Samar Abu Elouf
Samar Abu Elouf is an award-winning Palestinian photojournalist based in Gaza. Her work documents events that occur in her surroundings, focusing on the lives of women, children, and the consequences of war, as she covers the unfolding events around her.
Since 2010, she has worked as a freelance photojournalist on assignment for Reuters, The New York Times, and other international outlets. She documented the 2018–2019 Great March of Return and, in May 2021, covered the 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas, during which more than 230 people were killed, including several of her relatives. Samar is the 10th Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award recipient and the World Press Photo 2025 Photo of the Year winner.
yasmine eid-sabbagh
In her practice, yasmine eid-sabbagh explores the potentials of human agency by engaging in experimental and collective work processes. These include (counter-)archiving practices such as the negotiation around a potential digital archive (re)assembled in collaboration with inhabitants of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tyr, Lebanon, and radical pedagogical projects such as Ses Milanes-créixer a la natura, a self-organized forest kindergarten in Bunyola, Spain, using nature as its main infrastructure.
Photography often acts as a medium for her to communally investigate notions of collectivity, power, and endurance; for example, in her engagement as a member of the Arab Image Foundation, a practitioner-led archival institution, and as a focus of her PhD in Art Theory and Cultural Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2018).
Chobi Mela, the first festival of photography in Asia, is one of the most exciting ventures that Drik and Pathshala has initiated. The first Chobi Mela – International Festival of Photography was held in December 2000 – January 2001. It is the most demographically inclusive photo festival in the world and is held every two years in Dhaka.