Origin

I grew up on this land and I still walk it. And the land was never just a view I point a camera at .. it's the ground my whole day happens on. The olives, the fig trees, the ears of wheat, the grape arbor. The spring mornings we went out for the wild plants .. za'itmana, 'ilt, the ones we picked. This was never scenery to me ..

Around 2024 I wanted to take my first composed, planned landscape photographs .. I had spent many years building my visual literacy around cinematography and street photography in Istanbul, Amman, and Palestine .. but then I wanted the land, the wide views .. the unblocked yet very framed landscapes, I remember it clearly.

I moved around Sir and the villages close to it, and kept finding compositions I didn't know were there .. villages that differ and match at the same time, and the people moving through them. Lately these places have started to face what other parts of Palestine have lived with for much longer, and it comes in stages .. first a settlement, then a base to guard it, then whatever stands nearby is demolished. So I photograph them now, across the seasons, the poppies in spring and the wheat going gold under the first heat. It belongs to all of us, and losing a piece of it feels like losing the whole thing.

The land came first, but it was never empty .. people kept walking into the frame, and my street years didn't leave me. So a few photographs here aren't landscapes at all. I kept the ones that felt like they belonged.

Some of this ground looks like nothing is happening on it, when really it's full of work and memory and people who belong there. That's why I set each photograph at its exact coordinates .. I stood right here, and this is what was before me. I want those who can to go and stand on the same spot, and see the same frame. While it can still be reached.

For printing, I tested these on good paper, but the eye-glowing ones were on cotton photo rag. Its texture, its warmth .. I knew I wanted these .. what you're getting is a print as warm as I felt in the moment I was shooting.

Please .. allow the imperfections. When a finished roll crosses back to Jordan it passes the x-ray more than once, and it carries those scars into the print. They are not mistakes, but the journey of these photographs .. photographing this land slowly is my own small refusal, and I want to keep looking at it while I still can.