News
Photojournalist Portrays Palestinians
by Hilary Connell
Staff Writer

In the midst of rallies and sit-ins protesting the potential war in Iraq--or protesting those protestors--several Stanford undergraduates desired to establish a non-threatening environment for discussion of campus and national political issues. That desire led to the formation at the beginning of this academic year of "Bursting the Bubble," a monthly forum that invites Stanford professors and guest speakers to facilitate such discussion. On Tuesday night, "Bursting the Bubble" hosted George Azar, a photojournalist with more than sixteen years of experience in the Middle East and author of the book Palestine, A Photographic Perspective. Azar presented both his photos and a controversial perspective on what he called "the Palestinian narrative in America."

Azar focused his presentation on a series of photos he shot in East Beirut in 1981, five years into the devastating Lebanese civil war. While some images displayed architectural damage resulting from bombings of the city, most of his pictures reflected a side of the war unknown by much the American public. Despite the advice of the Associate Press in the beginning of his photojournalistic career that "the best photos are the ones. . . .that have children and women shooting guns," Azar wanted to illustrate the lives of ordinary people during the war, particularly the mental and emotional affects of the war--hence his photos depicting children on their way to school, Palestinian Red Crescent rescue workers cleaning the streets after a bombing, and a teenage boy whose parents claimed he was the victim of shellshock. Azar attributes this photographic "mission" to realizations from his time spent employed by the State Department right after college: "My friends would talk about the destruction of a huge residential apartment building. . . .and not seem touched by it. . . ..I felt there was a lack of genuine human discussions about the impact [of war] on real lives."

While Azar's photos clearly did touch the students observing them, a few students questioned Azar's apparent presentation of only one side. His photos as well as his anecdotes came almost entirely from East Beirut while it was under siege by U.S.-supported Israeli troops. Azar explained that while he had done some photojournalistic work in West Beirut as well, he felt that the suffering of the Palestinian people had been more seriously overlooked by the media. By only shooting pictures of Palestinian fighters, Azar said, he felt he was "not informing the American public, but disinforming them." "The reduction of an entire country to visual signs of guns and explosives skewed the image of the American public," Azar elaborated. "I believe there is a fundamentally wrong perspective in the U.S. that the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis is a conflict between two equal sides. But one is a nation-state backed by a Western superpower, while the other is an occupied people whose majority lives in extreme poverty. . . .The Palestinian narrative is unknown in this country, and I defy anyone to name a major Palestinian or Arab figure that has been portrayed in American cultural life as a hero, who laughs, who loves his family."

While his comments did little to resolve some students' criticism, his photo presentation sparked a debate about the portrayal of the Middle East in the American media that several students expressed an intent to continue in campus political meetings and in their classes in the upcoming weeks.

Page last modified on Wednesday, 01-Mar-2006 23:51:26 MST.