Gaza Mode d’Emploi

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Yes, I like Gaza.

I like Gaza but never been able to tell why: each time I was there it was either just before, during or right after it would disappear in front of my eyes.

In those occasions, I would photograph what I thought that I should photograph, and I would do it with a tragic and solemn tone like everything that I was witnessing.

Still, I would not stop asking what was that I liked so much in all that.

While I was taking those photos, other photos were taking me, other photos that I felt that I should do without understanding so well why.

But I did understood that, in the same way that a place can be many places at the same time, while photographing Gaza I was doing photos of all those different places at the same time.

And the photos of that other Gaza, the one that I like, are photos that I find only when I’m not seeking them. Those are photos that if I think about it I don’t quite understand why or how I took them, but I do know that somehow all made sense one afternoon that I saw a man with a red ballon covering his face. The balloon said “I love you” and I understood that it was Gaza telling me that, exactly the same that I always wanted to tell her.

It was then when I understood this project as a failed attempt to explain something, a user’s manual about an inexplicable place, a sort of preventive archeology about a unique and endangered society.

I still don’t understand why I like Gaza so much, but at least now I suspect that what I like is hiding in these little pieces: this Mode d’Emploi won’t be useful to find an answer but it will be the perfect excuse to keep on living Gaza over and over again.