In the summer of 2011, shortly graduating UC Irvine with a degree in political science, I went on an educational trip along with 30 students and professors. We came from all walks of life, but were all student diplomats & traveled throughout Israel, Palestine, and Jordan for three weeks, meeting & speaking with over 80 influential people, organizations, and groups both on the ground and in government. We constantly traveled through checkpoints, visiting numerous cities including Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Hebron, Amman, Jenin, Qalqilya, Ariel, East & West Jerusalem, Haifa, and many more. We visited three refugee camps, in Bethlehem, Jenin, and Amman, Jordan. We met in the Knesset with members of the Netanyahu administration, met members of Fatah, spoke with various non-profit organizations such as Bt’Selem, Wi’am, the Parent Circle, OCHA (a division of the UN), and The Quartet, amongst others. We also had the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prince Hassan of Jordan, as well as members of the Jordanian Senate.
Recognizing how much of an honor it was to meet with all of these highly esteemed diplomats and respected people, the most rewarding of all these experiences was connecting and speaking with the ordinary citizens of Palestine, Jordan, and Israel who live in this conflict every day of their lives. They brought a human aspect to the entire experience that cannot be read in a book or seen on the news.
I feel in this Age of Information, each of us possess the power to act as our own media, so we can free ourselves of the incessant biased media outlets that surround us everyday and rewrite history based on the doctrine that no one knows otherwise. I took over 4,000 images in the region with the intent of spreading awareness to people who might not otherwise know or care about what is going on in this war torn region of the globe. The psychological gaps in this conflict play a much larger role in preventing peace than the physical gaps do, and it is my intention to lessen this gap through photography.
Amazingly, I won RAW Artists Photographer of the Year in 2012 for this body of work. It was an unexpected honor that I will write about in a future post. However, I feel this project is bigger than me because it is not me who has won, but it helped shed light on an entire region of people who have suffered for too long without proper recognition and understanding.
Look for this body of work in the Documentary tab. Thanks for taking the time to see what I'm all about. <3
Recognizing how much of an honor it was to meet with all of these highly esteemed diplomats and respected people, the most rewarding of all these experiences was connecting and speaking with the ordinary citizens of Palestine, Jordan, and Israel who live in this conflict every day of their lives. They brought a human aspect to the entire experience that cannot be read in a book or seen on the news.
I feel in this Age of Information, each of us possess the power to act as our own media, so we can free ourselves of the incessant biased media outlets that surround us everyday and rewrite history based on the doctrine that no one knows otherwise. I took over 4,000 images in the region with the intent of spreading awareness to people who might not otherwise know or care about what is going on in this war torn region of the globe. The psychological gaps in this conflict play a much larger role in preventing peace than the physical gaps do, and it is my intention to lessen this gap through photography.
Amazingly, I won RAW Artists Photographer of the Year in 2012 for this body of work. It was an unexpected honor that I will write about in a future post. However, I feel this project is bigger than me because it is not me who has won, but it helped shed light on an entire region of people who have suffered for too long without proper recognition and understanding.
Look for this body of work in the Documentary tab. Thanks for taking the time to see what I'm all about. <3
