Slidefest Palestine

GPP Slidefest, an event founded in Dubai by Gulf Photo Plus, is an evening of inspiring photography presentations by artists around a central theme. Each photographer takes the stage for 5/7mins to share their photography series followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Since its inception over a decade ago, GPP has held over 30 of these Slidefest evenings and have presented them in Cairo, Jeddah, Riyadh and Bahrain; the most recent one being held in London at the ICA last July in partnership with the Safar Film Festival.

GPP and the University of Greenwich are teaming up to present Slidefest Palestine centered on Palestine with presentations from photographers based in Palestine or the diaspora. The presentations will share work from the ground in Palestinian featuring an array of stories - from the skateboarding community in Palestine to the plight of expectant mothers at checkpoints to archival photos from the 50s in Gaza.

Come join us for an evening of powerful photography presentations by Palestinian artists unveiling the resilience and struggle within the heart of Palestinian existence.

Admission to the event is free, but you will need to register to attend via this page.

OR, if you prefer to contact the gallery directly to register, please email ugg@gre.ac.uk

Maen Hammad - Landing

Landing is a collaborative look at the purposeful escape that skateboarding provides to a handful of Palestinian skaters, including Hammad himself. This purposeful escape is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence, situated in the mundane and explicit layers of Israeli domination in Palestine. Woven throughout are also tales of his own family’s experience of displacement, diaspora, and partial return.

“I brought my skateboard with me to Palestine in 2014 when I moved back after living 19 years in the US, because I knew I would be a stranger. I needed the kid in me to remind himself that all is well, while I tried to find home. Skating leads us into a parallel world, where we can participate in our surroundings. This participation is an interpretive dance with the built environment, a tool to assemble a community, and most importantly, a centering on the imagination. This project serves as a reminder for this pocket of freedom, as we all try to find our landing. Throughout the project are photos taken by myself, as well as those taken on disposable cameras from the core group of skaters. I simply asked them to photograph the world around them.”

Rehaf Batniji - Fables of the Sea

In Rehaf Batniji's project "Fables of the Sea" she captures portraits of fishermen paired with images of their catches. This juxtaposition creates a narrative of intertwined destinies, suggesting a moment of convergence between the fishermen and their catch. The series serves as a response to the life-threatening conditions put on Gaza's fishermen due to the aggressions imposed on them. For the people of Gaza, the sea isn't just a livelihood but a vital source of sustenance and survival. Rather than merely documenting struggle, Batniji focuses on portraying moments of resilience and contentment amidst adversity, offering a light-hearted approach to the nuances of daily aggression imposed on the people of Palestine.

Ozge Calafato - (Archives of Kegham Djeghalian)
Kegham Djeghalian Jr. - Preserving the Visual Archive of Gaza | Disrupted Histories and Photo Kegham

The first photography studio in Gaza was founded by Kegham Djeghalian Sr. in 1944. His grandson, Kegham Djeghalian Jr, works on activating the surviving fraction of his grandfather’s endangered archive. Focusing on the legacy of this exceptional photographer, Özge Calafato will share images from the collection and also briefly discuss the significance of preserving Gaza’s precarious visual history and cultural heritage in light of the current critical crisis in Gaza.

Samar Hazboun - Beyond Checkpoints

More than 67 Palestinian women were forced to give birth at checkpoints between 2000 and 2005. Comprehensive closures during the Second Intifada (2001) resulted in complete prohibitions on Palestinian movement into Israel, and between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These restrictions remain until this day and Israel stands behind this policy by arguing that it is necessary to protect its citizens. This project explores a series of births that took place at checkpoints by pairing portraits with relevant belongings of the subjects involved. Whether it is a premature death certificate or clothes prepared for a child that were never worn, these elements were inanimate witnesses to an otherwise undocumented event. They aim to introduce personal narratives by taking the viewer into images beyond what is usually seen, inviting them to explore stories through their secondary characters. The project is an intersection of memory, loss, grief, and a sad truth that all that remains from these tragedies are mere objects that bear witness to a slowly fading history.

Tanya Habjouqa - Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity

Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity is a photographic mapping of the boundaries – psychic and physical – that define contemporary Palestinian lives under occupation. Palestine requires an ability to accept the existence of contradictory and often hostile realities at once. Recent developments in Israel bode only a darkening future. Having spent 13 years living in East Jerusalem, raising two Palestinian children, Tanya has come to see the complexities of Palestinian reality in anguished and joyous detail. This series traces the losses and victories that define Palestinian life, shattering confrontations, microscopic liberations, and the forging, holding, and remembering of space she explores the tensions within and around landscapes and characters etched into the lives of the land’s occupied and occupying populations.

GULF PHOTO PLUS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH