Nakba 77: Palestine's Depopulated Villages

Photography installation by Ahmad Al-Bazz

Nakba 77: Palestine's Depopulated Villages, by Palestine-based independent journalist and photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz, is a photographic documentation of the 500+ Palestinian villages across Mandatory Palestine that were depopulated during the Nakba in 1948 and subsequently destroyed by the zionist settler state. The ghosts of wiped out Palestinian existence haunt almost every ‘Israeli’ settlement*, in the shape of the ruins of erased Palestinian villages still lying in them or in their vicinity. In his travels across the land, the photographer has witnessed and documented graveyards surrounded by electric fences, mosques degraded in serving as animal sheds, vacated Palestinian homes that were turned into artist villages, and many other forms of dispossession. The photos should not be viewed as stories about the past — at least as long as Palestinians are forced to remain refugees, banned from returning to their homes and lands.

*This refers to the towns and cities across all of Palestine, including, for example, the settlement of ‘Tel Aviv’ – built upon the site of Jaffa and its surroundings where 98% of the Palestinian population were expelled in 1948.