"Base Camp Balata"

Photographic Exhibit in London - Spitz Gallery - 26-31 July

 

Exhibition dates: 26 - 31 July

If you're interested in hosting the "Base Camp Balata" exhibit in other venues, please contact info@balatacamp.net

In late July, the Spitz Gallery (Spitalfields, London) will host an exhibition of photographs taken by children from Balata. Through these children's honest storytelling, these photos provide us with a wider understanding of the impact of war and occupation on childhood. While few of the photographs capture the full brutality of military occupation, they demonstrate how these children's lives have been formed by oppression and resistance. At the same time, the shared needs and desires of youth anywhere shine through the environment of war.

Prints and postcards of the photographs will be available.

 

 

Exhibition Launch:
6 - 9 pm, Tuesday 26 July

Location
Spitz Gallery
109 Commercial Street
Old Spitalfields Market
London E1 6BG

Contact
susanfong12@yahoo.co.uk
07740766498

   

 

Palestinian and international volunteers organised photography workshops for a group of children in Balata to give them guidance, support and training in photography. Photographers from Britain and the US came to Balata to work with the children and share their skills.

Issues were discussed including what messages photographs can convey and how people can represent their lives and express themselves through photographs.

Hundreds of photographs were taken using high-end digital cameras. The best fifty were selected for inclusion in the Exhibit.

An online photo gallery will be running in conjunction with the exhibition so that the children involved with the project will have the opportunity to view their photographs over the internet. The online gallery will also provide a means for children who see the exhibition in London to make contact with the children living in Balata so as to open channels of communication and understanding. School children living in the East End will be given the opportunity to take part in similar photography projects where they will explore issues surrounding their own identities and cultures through photography. Their photographs will also form part of the online gallery.

 

BENEFITS TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

In addition to exhibiting the photographs at the Spitz Gallery, the photographs will also be displayed in other art galleries and community venues across the UK. School groups and other community groups will be invited to view the photographs and to take part in workshops with the aim of promoting cultural awareness and developing cultural links between Palestinian children and children in the UK.

The workshops will also encourage the children to look for commonality between the experiences shown in the photographs and their own lives in an effort to develop understanding and empathy. Children will be asked to consider issues surrounding their own identities and cultures as well as other issues relating to citizenship (which currently forms part of the school curriculum). These issues are particularly relevant in an area such as Spitalfields which is rich in its cultural diversity and is home to one of London’s largest Bangladeshi and Muslim communities.

Through looking at the photographs and taking part in workshop discussions, children will have the opportunity to think about boundaries and walls erected around their own communities, whether social, political, religious or cultural. In doing so, it is hoped that they will be able connect with the sentiments conveyed in the photographs and their own feelings of frustration, isolation and disempowerment.

Social exclusion and ignored, disenfranchised communities exist everywhere whether in West Bank refugee camps or in East End housing estates. The aim of the photography exhibition will be to give a voice to these people and to invite different communities around the UK, particularly children and ethnic minority groups, to take part in similar projects so that they can also make themselves heard. Photography as a medium is a particularly effective and creative means of establishing a personal connection with an audience and we hope that the Balata photography exhibition will lay the foundations for developing constructive relationships and fostering understanding between children in the UK and Palestine.