When Lara Aburamadan first started taking photographs in the Bay Area after moving here in March 2017, she wandered the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco “trying to find familiarity, something I could connect to,” recalls the Palestinian journalist and artist.
She and her husband, fellow photojournalist Jehad al-Saftawi, were 24-year-old newlyweds in 2016 when they left their home in Gaza City to seek asylum in the U.S. They said life had become increasingly unsafe in a region battered by decades of violence and the crushing indignities and militancy of life under Israeli blockade.
当那个年一年的作家在加沙时，这对年轻夫妇遇到了作者和麦克韦尼的创始人戴夫鸡蛋，其中包括伯克利的Ayelet Waldman和Michael Chabon为他们的集体散文，“橄榄和灰烬王国”。
“我遇到了耶和华和拉拉，像我们很长时间彼此认识，”召回了鸡蛋。他与伯克利移民律师Cara Jobson联系，他同意接受他们的庇护案例Pro Bono。
With just a few suitcases and their camera equipment, al-Saftawi and Aburamadan arrived in Oakland following several months in New York to start the formidable process facing displaced people all over the world – rebuilding their lives from scratch.
“I started to use this hashtag, #RefugeeEye, every time I posted my photography (on social media)” starting in 2018, Aburamadan said in a joint video call with The Chronicle from the couple’s East Bay apartment. “I felt strongly that as a refugee I have a perspective. I needed to own that.”
四年后，这个简洁的短语，一个互联网友好的提醒，即最近到达美国物质的观点来看，对他们来说甚至更大的意义。
Aburamadan and al-Saftawi launched a nonprofit art gallery this month in San Francisco under the same name, Refugee Eye. The small but ambitious space in the front of the McSweeney’s building on Valencia Street and its online presence (www.refugeeyee.org.）致力于展示来自世界各地的难民的照片和其他艺术品。
“在留下背后的一切后，继续生活是一个如此艰难的经验，向人解释，”Al-Saftawi说。“We want visual storytellers and critical thinkers to share what it’s like, the thoughts you have on an existential level, when you are born and shaped somewhere very closed off from the rest of the world and then try to comprehend your new life while still processing your previous reality. It’s very hard.”
Images, the two believe, “can tell a story faster,” and spur cross-cultural understanding.
al-saftawi自己的起泡照片，在他逃离之前在加沙拍摄，都在5月8日展出，为画廊的首次展会，“我的加沙：照片中的一个城市。”毫不妥协的图像传达了一个城市痛苦的场景 - 从战争，悲伤，惯性和心跳起来 - 并从2020年发布的一本强大的照片书中绘制。他计划在3月日星期三在难民眼中讨论他的摄影谈话23。
在3月12日的画廊开放，包括鸡蛋和他的妻子，小说家Vendela Vida，祝贺进一步和磁性夫妇，并研究了Al-Saftawi的强大的人口，尚未在几代人口中尚未知名的人口。加沙市的基础设施处于废墟中。它的夜空与空中爆炸显示出来。
Some photos were taken from the window of al-Saftawi and Aburamadan’s 11th-floor apartment, from which they live-streamed Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in July 2014. In a country with scant independent media, it was one of the few live accounts of the devastation.
在一个图像中，一个年轻人的手在一堆混凝土瓦砾前拿着他的家庭照片。2015年，他的父母和六个兄弟姐妹被一个以色列轰炸所杀害。
“What Lara and Jehad can do as artists is to bring a human face to the suffering we all see on our TV screens,” said Christine Trost, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
Trost’s church, Berkeley’s All Souls Episcopal Parish, provides temporary housing to refugees, and she met the couple at Oakland International Airport when they arrived. She remembered picking them up and being “shocked by how incredibly young they both were, and also how incredibly brave and courageous in taking those steps to walk into this unknown future.”
“I have tremendous admiration for their bravery and resilience,” she said.
正如人文主义和自由思想家一样，他们发现，他们发现，“没有偏向任何冲突缔约方的观点”是一个不可行的地位，以持有凶猛的意识形态所在的区域。“一切都是如此政治化。我试过很长一段时间才离开，“早在2012年。
In Gaza, they were as apt to document the extremism of Hamas and what al-Saftawi calls the “conservatism you can not talk about” as they were to show Israel’s infringement of Palestinians’ civil rights.
“他们有一个非常强烈的庇护案例，”Jobson说。“最终，它归结为的是那些像他们那样思考的人，因为他们确实在加沙地区生活在一个真正困难的时刻，他现在已经拥有了哈萨斯队的社会。
“As I’ve gotten to know them the last few years, I’ve seen that they’re humanitarians through and through. They’re always thinking about what they can do to better the world, and that’s why they started Refugee Eye.”
Aburamadan, who also paints, plans to show her work next at Refugee Eye, followed by rotating shows featuring other artists every six weeks.
“我们将有来自伊朗的人，然后也许来自也门的人，”她说。“随着来自阿富汗的新难民飙升，现在来自乌克兰，我们也想展示他们的经历。”
“我的加沙：照片中的一个城市”：摄影。11周-6下午6点周二和周五 - 周六。5月8日艺术家谈话以jehad al-saftawi为6-8分。3月23日星期三。难民眼，849瓦伦西亚圣，S.F。646-468-0450。www.refugeeyee.org.
编辑注意：故事误导了监督加沙地带的政府。加沙自2007年6月以来一直受到哈马斯政府的统治。