Before Freedom: reclaiming representations of Palestine – in pictures

The Belfast photo festival has announced photographer Adam Rouhana as the recipient of its annual Spotlight award for his project Before Freedom, which premieres at the festival this month

Main image: From the series Before Freedom (2022–ongoing). Photograph: Adam Rouhana

  • Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother from New York, Adam Rouhana was raised in New England
    Palestinians bathing in a river

  • Despite this, he maintained a connection to Palestine, returning annually
    A horse jumps

  • Through this series of images, his work aims to reclaim representations of Palestine from western perspectives
    A young Palestinian eating fruit

  • For Rouhana, the Palestinian narrative has largely been shaped by foreign actors through an orientalist lens over the last century, often with the aim of exerting colonial influence
    A child wearing a Palestine flag as a cape runs through a street

  • Rouhana hopes Before Freedom offers a fresh interpretation of orientalism, presenting a reimagining of images and politics
    Two young men hold hands

  • Rouhana believes that by decolonising the photography of Palestine and embracing indigenous image-making, minds can be decolonised, leading to a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian reality
    Palestinians bathing in a river

  • Before Freedom asserts that an Israeli narrative intertwined with US discourse seeks to marginalise and dehumanise Palestinians under the guise of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’
    Two young Palestinian men, topless and wearing shorts, sitting on a pipeline on a beach that leads into the sea

  • For Rouhana, the intention is to transgress beyond the logic of settler-colonialism by simply imagining something else – by seeing, in his own words, ‘something that frankly all of us Palestinians see: Palestine as our homeland.’
    An older Palestinian man using a razor to shave the face of another older Palestinian man in a barber shop

  • Before Freedom presents a view of Palestine that Rouhana hopes moves beyond rolling news and documentary photography and photojournalism, which he believes can be biased and outmoded
    Hands preparing food

  • Through his investigations, Rouhana questions his positionality as a Palestinian behind the camera, both as westerner, who grew up in US, and as an Arab
    A small stone bridge with a cityscape in the background

  • Adam Rouhana is often inspired by scenes of his grandmother’s fruit orchard and domestic life from his early memories in Palestine
    from the series ‘Before Freedom’

  • Rouhana’s work embraces themes of the past to create a contemporary visuality characterised by representations of Palestinian lives that embody an active ethic of self-determination
    A sepia-toned photograph of Rouhana's family hung on a wall
Topics