In December 2022, our team welcomed visual journalist Tamir Ben Kalifa for a capacity building session on photography.

Through this collaboration, we hope to enrich the representation of our communities and raise the voices and stories of the women, men, girls and boys living in the West Line.

Our villages, and especially the electronic waste industry, have been documented by several photographers and journalists, bringing to the fore the environmental and health impacts of e-waste dismantling and burning.

As inhabitants who witness and experience these impacts daily, but also contribute to finding alternative solutions and practices, building families, homes and lives under occupation, we believe our pictures and stories can contribute to a nuanced and deep understanding of the situation but also to more effective policies and interventions, which can be relevant for our communities and beyond.

The approach draws on the PhotoVoice method, which has been used in a diversity of contexts, from women in Japan sharing their experience of the 2011 Fukushima disaster to individual recovering from addiction, and communities seeking to foster public support and challenge sigma.

We will be working on this Photovoice approach as part of the MERC funded project “Assessing the Health and Environmental impact of e-waste”, led by Prof. Garb, and hope to have a first exhibition ready for September 2023.

Source: photos from S. Toledano, December 2022