‘We deserved a better time on this earth’: New York’s Palo Gallery showcases Palestinian photography

A new show at Palo Gallery in New York is shedding light on three young Palestinian photographers whose works explore themes like home, displacement, identity and geography that are all the more poignant in light of the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Longing: In Between Homelands brings together photographs by Ameen Abo Kaseem, Nadia Bseiso and Lina Khalid, all now living in other countries in the Middle East. The show features 22 photographs selected by the artists themselves from previous projects. The gallery was connected to the three photographers through the Magnum Foundation, a nonprofit created by the members of the photography co-op Magnum Photos.

“When you see Palestinians in the news, it's generally in the form of protest or tied to violence,” says Daneyal Mahmood, Palo Gallery’s managing director. “This is a chance for the artists to show their work as creators. I hope people walk away with a less reductionist view of Palestinians."

The gallery opening on Wednesday (8 January) saw Palo Gallery’s space on East 3rd Street packed, despite it being one of New York’s coldest nights of the winter thus far. While photographs can be a hard sell compared to paintings, the gallery sold two works on opening night. Palo Gallery will be covering the show’s production costs, and all proceeds from the $750 prints will go directly to the artists.

"Photography is very good at capturing people on that arc where reality confronts expectations,” Mahmood says. “One can imagine where they hoped their life would be, in contrast to where it is (in the photograph)."

On display alongside many of Kaseem’s black-and-white photographs are sections of text he wrote about living through violent conflict. With an image of three people embracing and carrying packed bags, is written:

“‘They’ve canceled all flights to and from Beirut until further notice.’...
I wonder: if I were born on the other side of the world, would I be in this same moment?
And if I were, would I still be me?
I cut off this pointless thought.
I turn to my friends and tell them that everything will be alright.
I stare at the ground for a long time, muttering, “We deserved a better time on this earth.’”

“I hope visitors come away with a sense of the complexity of home and exile—not just as a physical condition but as an emotional and generational one," Kaseem, who is Palestinian Syrian, wrote to The Art Newspaper from Beirut, where he is now based. "I want them to feel the layers of it, the longing for a home that exists more in the mind and heart than in geography. This work is also about resilience—the quiet resistance of remembering, of refusing to let our stories disappear.”

Of the three artists in the show, only Bseiso’s photographs are in colour. A Palestinian Jordanian photographer living in Amman, she captured images of children playing in water features like a river, a spring and a half-filled swimming pool, on rocky landscapes and along a dry, dusty road. Water—and the lack of it—symbolises how centuries of conflict have transformed the region, she said in a statement.

“The images selected were to highlight the water crisis countries of the Fertile Crescent are facing ... the restrictions man-made borders have put our freedom and the fact that this geographical area is rich with water, but geopolitics plays a very big role on who get what, how much and when,” Bseiso says.

Khalid was born in Amman, and growing up in Jordan would visit the Red Sea and see Palestine from across the water. The experience heavily influenced her later work, and her photographs in the exhibition explore the Dead Sea as both a physical and emotional landscape, she wrote in a statement, which speaks to both the "hope and grief of ... gazing at a land we can see but cannot touch".

“I want visitors to reflect on the universal themes of displacement and longing," Khalid says. "While the work is deeply rooted in the Palestinian experience, the emotions it conveys are not confined by borders. It’s an invitation to think about what it means to lose a home, to carry memories across generations, and to gaze toward something you may never reach.”

• Longing: In Between Homelands, until 8 February, Palo Gallery, New York