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The first thing Samar Abu Elouf does before photographing a dead child is make sure it isn’t one of her own.

Feelings of fear, panic and duty overcome the award-winning photojournalist and mother of four, who makes no attempt to conceal her tears as she raises a camera to her eye and snaps, capturing another agonizing scene in Gaza.

It’s been more than 10 years since Abu Elouf became a photojournalist, defying traditional gender roles and blazing new trails for women in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. Since then, she’s captivated the world and set hearts on fire with portraits of death, displacement and despair — as well as moments of joy and resilience.

Her latest photographs — documenting the horrors of war in Gaza since October 7 — have garnered critical acclaim, including the 2024 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award and a George Polk Award.

They depict mothers and fathers mid-scream, crouched over tiny bodies wrapped in white, blood-stained shrouds; hospital cribs full of premature babies, their malnourished bodies as frail as twigs; children looking up at the sky in horror as Israeli bombs rain down.

“Taking pictures of corpses hurts me most. One of the worst was a photo of 170 dead bodies, all piled on top of each other,” Abu Elouf, 40, tells CNN in Arabic from a hotel room in Cairo, where she had earlier given a talk on war photography. “These are human beings, not just bags of flesh, blood and bones. Bodies of all sizes, from newborns to grandparents. These are people who dreamed of living until tomorrow and had hope they would survive the war.”

As a Palestinian from Gaza, Abu Elouf has experienced more war and strife than she cares to remember. But the level of brutality and destruction wrought by this latest assault caught her by surprise and threw her life into a tailspin.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas’ attack in Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and hundreds of others taken hostage, Israeli officials say. In the nine months since that attack, Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

For months, Abu Elouf slept in the back of her Jeep, using the bathroom once a day and eating what little food she could find. She drove back and forth between cities, chasing Israeli airstrikes, standing atop the rubble of demolished homes listening to the screams of people trapped below. Determined to tell their stories, Abu Elouf never stopped working — not even when the bombs killed family members and destroyed her home in Gaza City, she says.

“I’m not just a person with a camera, I’m a human being. As I’m taking these pictures, I know what I’m seeing isn’t normal,” she says, her voice cracking under the weight of her words. “Being a journalist in Gaza feels like you’re dying on the inside over and over again.”

Abu Elouf was 26 years old and a mother of three when she decided she wanted to be more than an obedient wife and dedicated homemaker.

“When I lived that life, I always felt that something was missing. I was so young and suddenly my life didn’t feel like mine anymore. I dreamed of studying, of doing something meaningful for myself and my people,” Abu Elouf says.

She explored different disciplines — writing, public relations, even accounting — but nothing spoke to her like photography.

“It’s not just a photo, it’s the soul I see behind the photo,” Abu Elouf says. “You get to peek into someone’s life, to feel close to a complete stranger and emotion tugging on your heart.”

The idea of becoming a photographer immediately consumed her life. She began every morning with a walk on the beach, often submerged in daydreams about the work she’d do and the impact it would have. She imagined herself walking through galleries featuring her photographs and on stages winning awards.

“I wanted to show people what Gaza is — that there is beauty here,” she says. “That the people of Gaza, despite the injustice and oppression they’ve always faced, still insist on finding joy and innovation and life.”

So when her former husband and both of their families reprimanded her for desiring to study photography, she snuck out of the house and did it anyway.

“If you can’t tell by now, I’m a bit stubborn,” Abu Elouf says, laughing. “I couldn’t find it in me to accept my fate of staying at home with no passions or dreams of my own. That was the moment that transformed my life, when I had to make a choice, and I chose my dream and the passions of my heart, and to leave everyone’s judgment behind.”

In 2010, between the responsibilities of motherhood and the pressures of society, Abu Elouf enrolled in photography courses. She supplemented her studies with free, online tutorials on composition, exposure and editing.

With no money or camera of her own, Abu Elouf often drove across Gaza to find photographers willing to lend her equipment, which she experimented with on a range of subjects. She photographed beautiful beach days and Eid celebrations, as well as Israeli attacks and demonstrations against the military occupation. Some days were light and fun, others plagued by violence at every turn.

“I would run from the north to the south. I would run to the border, still so new to the streets with no sense of where the danger was or what risks I was putting myself in. I just wanted to take pictures, to get to know Gaza and the world around me,” she says.

Within a year, a series of photographs Abu Elouf had taken of Palestinian women and children was selected for a university exhibit in Gaza. The following year, while still using borrowed equipment, she won a photo competition hosted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Her winning photograph depicted Palestinian children, faces lit by candlelight, celebrating a birthday in a refugee camp.

The image — as harrowing as it is heartwarming — revealed as much about the children as it did about Abu Elouf. “It was a defining moment for me as a photographer when I realized people could see my personal emotions seeping through my photos,” she says.

Before long, Abu Elouf began freelancing for news outlets, including Reuters, Middle East Eye and Al Ghaidaa, a local women’s magazine.

In 2015, a photograph of her covering a border protest went viral. Lacking safety equipment, she made a helmet out of a cooking pot and a vest from a blue plastic bag. She scrawled “TV” and “press” on them to identify herself as a journalist.

“I wanted to make sure I was seen as a journalist, not a protester, and I had the right to be protected as such. I became famous in Gaza for that image of me. I went in front of the Israeli soldiers and people laughed, asking me what I cooked for them in the pot, but I couldn’t care less,” she says. “I just took my pictures.”

Abu Elouf was used to being doubted and laughed at. For the first eight years of her career, some male colleagues mocked and harassed her, undermining her talents in photography. But as her work began reaching the world — published in such high-profile outlets as New York magazine — she earned the respect of her colleagues and is now considered one of the most distinguished photojournalists in Gaza.

“I created myself,” she says proudly, “all on my own.”

Despite the dangers of her profession, Abu Elouf says she’s not afraid to die.

“I don’t know what it’s like to run from danger, I only run toward it. Even when a missile is dropping, I don’t run,” she says defiantly.

Her courage didn’t come overnight. Reminiscing on the first anti-occupation demonstration she covered, Abu Elouf confesses she ran away with protesters when Israeli soldiers began firing bullets and tear gas. When she returned home and saw that her colleagues’ photographs were better than hers, she vowed to never run away again.

“My job isn’t to hide, it’s to photograph. Even when everyone around you is screaming, covering their ears as the missiles are dropping and they’re trying to find a place to hide, you don’t look down or look for safety, you focus on them,” she says, now a seasoned war photographer.

The only thing that scares her, she says, is the prospect of losing her children.

That fear was realized for many of her colleagues, including her dear friend Mohammed Alaloul, an Anadolu Agency photographer. She rushed to his side in November when he learned that several family members, including four of his children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Abu Elouf says she swallowed the lump in her throat and choked back a scream as she photographed him praying over the bodies of his children.

One of her photos shows Alaloul still wearing his press vest, tears streaming down his face as he clutches his daughter’s lifeless body to his chest. Behind the camera, she wept too.

“This isn’t uncommon, seeing journalists and photographers finding their dead children while working,” Abu Elouf says. “My biggest fear is finding myself in the position of the people I photograph, to be the one pictured mourning over my children’s bodies.”

Many Palestinians believe Israel is targeting journalists and their families. The Israeli army insists its forces do not intentionally target journalists and that Israel supports a free press.

Since October 7, at least 108 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and other attacks — 103 of whom are Palestinian, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ says it’s the deadliest period for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992, and that it’s also investigating about 350 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries in the region.

The killing of her colleagues has become so frequent that ordinary Palestinians have begun distancing themselves from journalists to avoid airstrikes, Abu Elouf says.

“In the past, civilians would stay close to journalists because they felt safer near us. Now they stay as far away as possible,” she says. “If I’m in line at a bakery or an ATM, strangers on the street are scared to stand anywhere near me. They say to each other: ‘She’s a journalist, stay away from her. They might kill her while we’re close by.’”

Abu Elouf understands their fear and doesn’t begrudge friends or family for keeping their distance — but says she must remain true to her calling.

“I work to capture stories, to make the world see. This is worth dying for.”

Despite a lifelong vow to never leave Gaza, Abu Elouf says she reluctantly accepted an opportunity in December from the New York Times, where she often works as a freelancer, to evacuate with her children to Qatar.

“Never in my life, not during any of the wars in Gaza including this one, did I want to leave Gaza. But I couldn’t risk one of my children being injured or facing any more mental trauma. I knew I’d never forgive myself,” she says.

Still, she struggles being far from home. “Being away from Gaza has been a million times harder than trying to survive the war and living under bombardment,” she says.

At night, Abu Elouf shuts her eyes and prays, begging sleep to come and silence the haunting memories of war and all it has stolen from her. She tries to imagine she’s back home, walking by the sea with her morning coffee or holding her mother’s hand.

“I try to sleep, but I can’t from the smell of death that won’t leave my nose and the faces of the dead that won’t leave my mind,” she says.

For now, Abu Elouf fills her days giving talks about the war, advocating for her colleagues still in Gaza, and helping her children navigate life in a foreign land. She doesn’t know which direction her career will take. Until she can return to Gaza, Abu Elouf says she’ll likely follow Palestinians injured and displaced from the war to wherever they have been evacuated and continue documenting their lives there.

She’s also started practicing English, hoping it’ll help her land assignments in other conflict zones, like Ukraine or Sudan. It’s her duty as a photojournalist, she says, to give voice to oppressed people everywhere.

But no matter where she goes, there’s only one place she’d rather be.

“Gaza is intertwined with my heart and soul. I love her sea, her energy. She is what inspired my love for photojournalism. If I could be anywhere — even with the injustice, the violence, the war — it would be Gaza.”