Thoughts and Photos and Such
This reflection took me a long time to write. I never felt like I could express how grateful I was for the opportunity, and as cliche as this sounds, I had no idea where to begin.
When people ask me how the trip was, I can barely sum it up in an adjective like ‘incredible’ and if they are students with at least another year here at Harvard, I very very enthusiastically tell them “you MUST apply to go next year”. I think people expect me to have a neatly packaged elevator pitch. They expect me to be brainwashed or angry, but instead I feel passionately moderate. My only argument is that is it complicated, but I have just about endless counterarguments to arguments from other students. In other words, I have no idea how to start conversations about Israel, but I have an AWFUL lot to say once a conversation is underway. I can better understand the frustrations of so many of the different groups living in the region and I do not think radicalizing any of them is productive, but I am privileged to try and assess a situation from such a removed birds-eye perspective by not having my personal safety, identity, or nationality at stake. It is easier to critique than propose solutions and it is more exciting to agitate than to moderate. So I came away from a radically transformative spring break not trying to drive forward a specific cause, but rather just humbled by what I had learned. I am embarrassed by how little I knew of the region before. I considered myself a global citizen, but I had not taken the time to read the history of Israel and the Middle East more broadly. Having said that, no amount of reading on my own could have taught me more than the exceptionally-well curated Israeli Trek. I have traveled a lot, but I have never traveled with such an extraordinary well thought-out curriculum and intention.
In my first-ever photography class I took as a sophomore at Harvard, my professor said “use photography to give you access” because the camera can allow you to interact with people that you otherwise might not have one-on-one moments with. This idea has fueled a lot of photography I have worked with since — from asking a crush if I could photograph him as a sophomore to a recent project in a marketplace in Ghana. The Harvard department of Visual and Environmental Studies (recently renamed the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies) focuses strongly on the theory behind art photography instead of the aesthetics of travel photography that we are more accustomed to seeing on social media. I also think the most intriguing photographs of a place are not the ones most other tourists would take, but rather the layer of culture that rests below the most well-known sites of a country. So while I have one too many photos of me smiling with delicious food in Israel, below are just a few of the portraits that fall outside that genre.
