With Dr. Islah Jad and photographer Joss Dray
Wednesday, 28 May, 18:00-19:30
Location: the Palestinian Museum
Language: Arabic | French translation available


Join us for a guided tour led by Dr. Islah Jad through the exhibition "With My Own Eyes" by French photographer Joss Dray, who describes herself as a the "photographer of resistance". During her time in Palestine, Dray was accompanied by Dr. Jad, who introduced her to many families, offering a deeper look into the daily realities of Palestinian life. The tour invites a broader conversation on the role of women in both Intifadas and in everyday resistance. Dray will also share her experiences and the stories she captured through her lens—images that remain a living testimony to moments that shaped our collective consciousness and continue to resonate today.
 

About the Exhibition

"With My Own Eyes" invites us to delve into the living timeline of Palestine through the lens of French photographer Joss Dray. At a time when standing with Palestine was considered professional suicide, Dray dared to document the atrocities of the occupation and follow the Palestinian resistance across the occupied land and the refugee camps in Lebanon—from the Sabra and Shatila massacre, through the First Intifada, to Oslo and the Second Intifada.

In the Palestinian context, documenting through sound and image was not always an option, leaving our story vulnerable to distortion, erasure, and denial—starting with the first displacement, when survival took precedence over documentation. Amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the scenes on the ground resemble horror films. Yet for Palestinians, they are a repetition of a past that remained blurred, except for fragments of oral histories that once felt like fiction. Every image, every cry, every shrouded body, every southern displacement, and every tented exile tells a story we may not have seen but know by heart.

Palestine is not a single tragic narrative, but a temporal tapestry interwoven with millions of personal and collective stories shaped by resistance, and by a life both painful and inspiring. This exhibition is not merely a collection of photographs; it is a living archive of the entangled relationship between past and present, helping us reimagine both memory and future—as Ghassan Kanafani said, in a cycle that "does not begin except to end, and does not end except to continue".