EL AL | Atmosphere

A year since October 7

On the morning of October 7, Ziv Koren was one of the first photojournalists present in the attacked communities of the south, ready to document the atrocities that had taken place. As we mark a year since the start of the war, we asked him about how he deals with having to witness horrific scenes, about his sense of calling, and the paramount necessity of documenting the current tragedies for the sake of the future generations / By Maya Cohen

Together, photojournalist Ziv Koren and his camera have been everywhere: through the burnt streets of the ravaged kibbutzim, along the Nova festival escape roads, IDF army bases, Gaza battlefields, and the cities near the Gaza border under constant rocket fire. Koren has been documenting every angle of the current war, the heroic soldiers, the heartbroken families at innumerable funerals, the anguish and tenacity of the families of the hostages. He recently published a book with 500 of his photos, entitled “October 7”, (soon to be published in English as well), and an exhibition of his work is on show at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa. Koren also regularly gives lectures on his work, adding new photos as events unfold. “In the past 11 months I’ve taken 350 thousand photos. I work every day, constantly refreshing and reorganizing my exhibition, book, and lectures. I live and breathe this story”, he says. Documenting history You’ve witnessed the most horrific scenes. How do you deal with that? “I’m very aware of the importance and relevance of my role in

documenting this historic period. It’s not just about getting the right shot for tomorrow’s newspaper – it’s about leaving a trace for the future generations. Every single day, there are photos of historic relevance that need to be taken. These are documents teachers and historians will be using in 50, 60 years’ time”. And yet, when you’re back home after a day of documenting atrocities, how do you process what you’ve seen? “I think about the importance and meaningfulness of my job much more than about my personal processing of emotions. To me the most important thing is to have faith, not necessarily in a religious way. I truly believe in the importance of my mission, which gives me immense strength, however difficult a time this is for us all – more difficult than anything we’ve ever gone through”. Even so, how do you deal with it all? “I keep constantly busy with work, editing pictures, filtering out the material, writing captions – I’m practically on the job 24/7. I suppose it’s part of the strategy. I don’t think it’d be right to stop and pause to process what I saw”. Because it would be too hard? “I suppose so. I’m a person who’s

very project-oriented. Usually when I prepare an exhibition or publish a book, at the end there’s a time when the project comes to completion, and I can look back on the process. But here, there is no end. While my book is being published and my exhibition is on show, I’m still taking photos every day, adding material, constantly refreshing the existing body of work. Thousands of people have seen the Peres Center exhibition, and I give lectures there to foreign delegations and ambassadors, with all the revenue going to the Hostages Families Forum, as indeed does that of the book”. Has something changed about how you define your role as a photojournalist since the start of the war? “I can’t speak for anybody else, but personally I’ve always considered my role as a photojournalist as having social relevance. The only thing that’s new in my work now is that I also do advocacy work. I’ve collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, allowing them to use my exhibition for free, and to date, my work has been shown in more than 40 countries. I give many interviews to foreign journalists in which I explain

"I do everything I can to make sure the subject is always on the table. It’s mad that half the world has either forgotten or doesn’t believe what happened. I make a point of talking about it everywhere I can and to remind people of the plight of our hostages still held in Gaza"

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ATMOSPHERE OCTOBER 2024