By Humaira Ahad

“Knock knock! Who’s there
Someone fair with curly hair…
Goals are waiting for me to achieve it over there
Psychoanalyst I want to be…
Apologies! Forgot my name
Yousef Dawas…”

In these words, Yousef Maher Dawas introduced himself on the website of “We Are Not Numbers” (WANN).

Dawas was one of the founding members of WANN, an initiative where “Palestinian youth tell their human stories behind the numbers in the news.”

A resident of north Gaza, Dawas was killed along with his family members when an Israeli airstrike hit his home on October 14 in Beit Lahia.

Dawas was studying psychology to become a psychoanalyst. In addition to attending university, the young Palestinian pursued his passion for writing and photography. He wrote in both Arabic and English.

“My family will replace the trees destroyed by Israeli missiles, but we cannot reclaim the years spent nurturing them,” Dawas wrote last January in an article titled, “Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”

In the writing, Dawas narrated the story of a plunder committed in 2022 by the forces of the Israeli regime, destroying the orchards and burning the fruit trees that the family had been maintaining for generations.

As a youngster, Dawas had multiple interests. He loved to play the guitar for his friends. He was also involved in the production of videos. In one of the videos, Dawas expressed his extreme desire to visit all the cities of Palestine, “I just want to visit Palestine,” the young man said in the video.

The desire is common among Palestinians, and many like Dawas die carrying the wish to the grave.

Controlling movement is one of the most important tools being used by the settler colonial regime to enforce its occupation. Israel doesn’t allow Palestinians to travel between Gaza, the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The situation in the besieged strip is the worse where strict restrictions have been imposed by the occupying forces for the last 16 years to check the movement of Gaza’s residents. The severe restrictions even affect the movement of international human rights workers to travel to the coastal strip to document gross human rights violations committed by the illegitimate Zionist entity.

Dawas who had not seen the world outside Gaza used words to document his pain.

“I put my hands on my heart to catch it from falling, and I felt the three holes there in my heart.”

Dawas painfully recounted the destruction caused by Israel to his ancestral land.

“The orchard trees produced olives, oranges, clementines, loquats, guavas, lemons and pomegranates, and its loss “destroyed an important piece of our past. Our family’s history. Our heritage.”

Tala Albanna, a friend of Dawas regarded him as her therapist: “My beloved Yousef, Joe as he used to be named, or my therapist as I was accustomed to calling him … He was a great [support] to me besides a study partner during all exams period.”

“I want to talk about Yousef, I want hours to talk about him – even hours would not be enough … All the people who met him loved him! Because he was funny; he was a joyful guy … Yousef was one of the most sensitive, helpful and interesting guys I have ever met in my life,” Ahmed Dremly, a fellow writer at WANN, wrote in a eulogy to Dawas.

In his last article published in August last year, Dawas chronicled the beautiful love story of a young Palestinian couple. The young writer narrated the companionship shared by the husband and wife that stood the test of time when the wife suffering from a kidney ailment had to undergo severe hardships in the face of the medical blockade in Gaza.

The health services in the besieged strip have been in poor shape owing to the decades-long blockade imposed by the regime. Already in dilapidated condition, the health sector has been one of the major casualties in Israel’s latest aggression on Gaza which started on October 7 following Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by the Hamas-led resistance movements against the Israeli occupation.

As per a UN report released on Friday, Hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked almost 600 times since Israel started its latest war on the besieged strip.

“WHO’s online platform covering attacks on healthcare indicated 304 attacks in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. The attacks affected 94 healthcare facilities (including 26 hospitals damaged out of 36) and 79 ambulances,” the UN news website reported.

Condemning the continuing fighting and bombardment, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that the “ongoing reduction of humanitarian space plus the continuing attacks on healthcare are pushing the people of Gaza to a breaking point.”

“Children in the Gaza Strip face a deadly triple threat to their lives, as cases of diseases rise, nutrition plummets and the escalation in hostilities approaches its fourteenth week,” the UN body noted.

On 18 June 1984, miners from all over the country arrived in South Yorkshire to picket at the Orgreave coking works. The day began peacefully. The weather was good, and miners were sitting in the sun or playing football.

Suddenly, police in full riot gear began charging out in small groups. The violence escalated quickly. “Short shield units and mounted officers were everywhere, wielding their batons,” says the photographer John Harris. He remembers climbing up a wall to get a better view and being knocked backwards by a mounted officer. Gathering his equipment, Harris scrambled back into the fray, and as he was shooting, spotted Lesley Boulton, a member of Women Against Pit Closures, helping an injured picket. She was shouting for an ambulance when a policeman turned round on his horse and charged, swinging a truncheon at her head.

The battle of Orgreave was one of the most violent displays of police brutality in British industrial history. Harris’s image became emblematic, appearing on badges, banners and posters. The photograph is included in a new exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike. It features work by photographers such as Chris Killip, Brenda Prince, John Sturrock and Philip Winnard, a striking miner himself. Alongside the photographs are posters, vinyl records and other ephemera including an Arthur Scargill mask, a Thatcher dog toy and a selection of commemorative plates.

Prince, a feminist, working-class photographer, spent 18 months in Nottinghamshire. “I wanted to show the strike through women’s eyes,” she says. Most of the women she met previously worked as housewives. Suddenly, they were travelling around Britain, fundraising, picketing and meeting with trade unions.

“They all said that they became more aware and politicised,” says Prince. “They had incredible courage and determination, and gained tremendous confidence from doing what they did. A lot of the women said: ‘I’ll never be the same again.’”

Philip Winnard was 25 when the strikes were called. He was working at Houghton Main colliery, a deep mine near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. “Photography was just a hobby. I was a miner, I was on strike, and I had a camera on me. It wasn’t much deeper than that,” he says. The people in his images are not just miners; they are his friends, relatives, his own community.

The strikes lasted a year, ending in a bitter defeat for the miners. When the colliery closed in 1993, Winnard retrained in plastering and started his own business. Some of his friends also retrained. One went on to work as an NHS nurse, others became plumbers and electricians. “But a hell of a lot of people never worked again,” says Winnard. “They went on to long-term unemployment and sickness benefits.”

The repercussions of the strikes still ripple through present-day Britain. These photographs testify to the miners’ historic fight, as well as the power of images to record history, forge new representations and bring light to injustice. For John Sturrock, who covered the entirety of the strike for the trade union and labour movement press, the images look back at “a moment in recent history”, bearing witness to “a significant shift in the way society was operating”.

Striking images: photos of pickets and police

Women’s picket at Bevercotes colliery, Nottingham, 1985
Brenda Prince: “It was bloody cold that night, but these women were determined to picket. Lots of cars carrying scabs were driving past. This is the only picture I got without a car in it. The women were really angry; they couldn’t believe the number of miners who were going back to work.”

Bilston Glen, Scotland, 1984 (main picture)
John Sturrock: “I was working mainly in South Yorkshire in 1984, when I heard that a mass picket was planned at Bilston Glen, the largest pit in Scotland. I managed to get there in time to see this confrontation. Many of these men were arrested and held in jail until they were charged.”

Police attacking Lesley Boulton at the battle of Orgreave, Sheffield, 1984
John Harris: “Lesley shouted: ‘Get an ambulance!’ to the police. The horses swung round and charged. ‘I’ll have you as well, you bitch,’ shouted one officer as he swung at her head. I shot two frames as a miner pulled her back by her belt and the blow missed. It could have smashed her skull.”

Dot Hickling at a striking miners’ kitchen in Nottingham, c 1984
Brenda Prince: “Women played a vital role in the strikes, not only working to keep their homes intact but also fundraising, picketing and managing food distribution. They had nothing at the beginning – a few quid and some potatoes. Gradually, they got donations of food and set up a really good kitchen for striking miners.”

Darfield Main colliery, Barnsley, 1984
Philip Winnard: “This was taken not far from where I worked, at the very beginning of the strikes. We knew what was coming, but we didn’t know how long it would last. No one thought it would go on for a year. We thought it would last one week, a month, maybe a bit longer. None of us were prepared.”

One Year! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984/85 is at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, 18 January to 31 March.

Of the 66 current members of the fine art photography club ImageMakers, 35 submitted three photos each for this exhibit, titled Frame of Mind. The jury, which included local experts like Center for Photographic Art Executive Director Anna Jastrab, then picked one photo by each artist. The photographers were asked to write nine lines about what they had in mind while working on this one photo.

“It’s an unusual exhibit,” says photographer and poet Robert Nielsen, who writes a poem for each photo he is working on (for more on Nielsen’s other creative endeavors, see story, p. 26).

ImageMakers was started in 1996 by Richard Garrod and inspired by the rich photographic tradition of Monterey County (think Ansel Adams, Edward Weston). Local photographers started presenting their works in their living rooms until they became too popular to accommodate growing audiences.

“The group has been open to new ways,” Nielsen says. “There’s the sense of adventure and some cutting-edge work.”

Despite the stereotype that photography is the domain of men, one-third of ImageMakers’ members are women. That means less concentration on the mechanics of photography, and more of seeing photography first and foremost as art. The group meets each month in Monterey, in the McGowan House by St. James Episcopal Church. In addition to photo exhibits, the group organizes poetry outings, for example in Moss Landing.

Frame of Mind was curated by Robert Reese of the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts and includes work by Kenneth Parker, Mary Aiu and Gary Lopez.

Nielsen’s photo is one of the most striking in the exhibit. “Winter Light, Point Sur” is a seaside landscape taken from the safety of a simple cottage where poppyseed flowers fill a vase.

His lines go: “Light / time / standing still / winter morning / edge of the world // Dry Flowers / the past / when / people life laughter / filled this room // Now empty / children gone // What remains / a picket fence / an ocean / tomorrow / the long flat / wide horizon.”

FRAME OF MIND opening reception 5-7pm Friday, Jan. 12. Meet the artists 5-7pm Saturday, Jan. 27. Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, Fourth Avenue and Guadalupe Street, Carmel. carlcherrycenter.org. On display until Feb. 17.

Ajetunmobi took this photograph at a club in Whitechapel during the 1950s, one of a series of images documenting the glitzy, underground nightlife of the time. ‘Everyone looks so relaxed and wonderful; these are working class people in the middle of the East End who look like glamorous models,’ says Victoria Loughran, Ajetunmobi’s niece

Fashion icon, artist’s muse, queen of rock’n’roll … for more than 30 years, Kate Moss has been at the cutting edge. In her first landmark photoshoot with the late Corinne Day, the then teenage model embodied the blissed-out spirit and optimism of the early 90s. Since then, she’s been painted by Lucian Freud, sculpted by Marc Quinn, sung about by her ex Pete Doherty, and even rapped about by Playboi Carti and Kanye West. So what makes the Croydon beauty such an object of fascination? As she turns 50, five photographers who have taken classic images of the model share their thoughts.

‘I wanted a pure version of Kate with no distractions’

Nick Knight

This was shot on a 10-by-8 camera which gave a soft, delicate quality to skin tones. The image was almost size for size, so it’s a pretty realistic portrait of Kate. She comes in many guises, but for this Vogue cover, I wanted to get a pure version of Kate with very little distraction, which is why it’s just her face. We were in love with, fascinated by, and in awe of Kate and her talents.

What makes Kate different from a lot of other models is her understanding of imagery. If you said to her, “OK, I want you to look a bit Tina Modotti mixed with Edie Sedgwick,” she’d get it. An actor has a script to interpret, but a fashion model interprets the narrative in a piece of clothing.

Models know that a fraction of an inch makes all the difference to a picture. Kate would model with the same enthusiasm from the beginning of the day to the end. I remember a shoot for Visionaire, where I had her on a swing, going backwards and forwards – for seven hours! It was an act of physical endurance, but models can do it.

With Kate, you know you’ll always come out with a great image. She’ll put everything into it – and knows her face incredibly well. She’ll stand with me and the stylist, looking at pictures we’ve taken, and say: “Oh no, I can do better than that. If you move the light to the left, I’ll lift my head a bit and make my neck look longer.” Like any good performer, she knows how her persona is best delivered.

Kate represents the cultural zeitgeist in the same way Marilyn Monroe did. I started working with her in the mid-90s and we’re still doing shoots. That’s a long time to be relevant and inspirational. David Bowie’s metamorphosis from one character to another kept generations enthralled and Kate’s similar. She represents something that we think is exciting and important, but you can’t describe why that person is that way. They just are.

‘Lucian Freud had been injured by a zebra’

David Dawson

Kate had come round to cheer up Lucian Freud who was unwell in bed. He had painted her portrait a year or so before. A young film-maker had wanted to do a short film of Lucian with a zebra, inspired by a 1950s photograph of the artist with a stuffed zebra head. Lucian, who was very, very good with horses, gave the zebra a tap – but it suddenly yanked its head back and pulled him over. He was a bit sore for a few days although nothing was broken. So that was why he was in bed and he had to tell Kate all about this.

I’d let Kate into the house, brought her upstairs to Lucian, and said: “Oh Kate, I just want to have a photo of the two of you together.” Kate said: “Yeah, of course!” Then she spontaneously jumped into bed and had a cuddle with him. That’s the brilliance of Kate – she knows how to make a great photograph. But it also showed the tender friendship between the two of them.

‘She said she didn’t know her dress was transparent’

Richard Young

Last year, Kate and I were chatting about this shot and she said: “You could have told me my dress was transparent!” I thought: “Kate, you knew it was transparent. That’s why you were wearing it!”

The picture was taken in 1993, at one of the very first British fashion awards. Kate was about 19. What’s so lovely about it is that she’s got a cigarette in her hand. Smoke gives pictures a much better atmosphere. With everything now so pristine and clean, things can be quite boring.

I’ve been photographing Kate for years. The last time was a month ago, arriving at the British fashion awards in her black Valentino dress. She looked fantastic. She puts her outfits together so well, keeping it very simple. I don’t think that will ever change. In her later years, she’ll look just as remarkable, elegant and lovely.

‘She’s so British it’s probably tea in the cup, not coffee’

Kate Garner

I had shot Kate Moss before, for i-D magazine when she was about 14, a little fashion shoot about sweaters. By 1990, we knew each other from around town, being on the scene. The idea was to do a more sophisticated shoot, on the theme of the morning after the night before. We did a series of pictures where she was getting ready to go out, then coming home dishevelled, and then going out for a coffee the next morning.

The magazine I shot the series for didn’t publish them in the end because they said Kate wasn’t going to make it as a model. Then they came to me a couple of years later, wanting the pictures. They published one of her holding a teddy bear in her underwear, which is now kind of controversial.

The reason why Kate made it so big is that she’s deeply intelligent on a body level. She can figure out what you’re trying to do and make it bigger. It’s not just about being good-looking. This coffee picture, which is probably tea because she’s so British, is such a simple image – but she just connects with the camera. Of all the pictures I’ve taken of celebrities, the ones of Kate just keep selling.

The fashion world can be very: “Shall I be friends with this person – or is it more advantageous if I don’t speak to them?” Kate never indulged in that sort of behaviour, which makes her very likable. If you help Kate at all, she will be faithful to you.

As far as her looks go, you can think: “Oh, she’s just pretty.” But if you look deeper, you’ll see that the eyes are a little farther apart than normal, the mouth fuller, the cheekbones bigger – and suddenly that prettiness takes on another dimension. You could not take a bad picture of her.

‘I was always slightly nervous in her presence’

Johnnie Shand Kydd

This was taken outside the Ivy in London, where there had been some sort of dinner related to Madonna starring in Evita. I’ve always felt uncomfortable taking photographs of models when they’re socialising in their spare time because they actually make their living out of being photographed. So I was always slightly nervous in Kate’s presence. She’s one of those people who are able to exude the message: “Don’t point that camera at me.”

Damien Hirst, who I knew quite well, would have said: “Johnnie, take a pic and I’ll grab Kate.” It shows you how photographs can result from collaborations rather than the photographer just going snap. It’s very Damien – taking control and having the generosity to set up such a great shot for me.

Vogue once commissioned the YBAs to do portraits of Kate, so she was friendly with Tracey Emin and Sam Taylor-Wood too. I like Kate enormously: she’s always very sweet. Damien looks gobby? It was a gobby time! I took mountains of photographs of the YBAs, and one of the things I’d love was to spend the day with him. For Damien, the word no doesn’t exist, everything is achievable if you want it. I think the picture of him and Kate together has that same energy, that sense of fun and brilliance.