Speak Palestine, Speak Again
Martin A. Sugarman
Malibu, California: Sugarman Productions, 1997
Language: English
10 in. (H) by 12 in. (W)
144 pages
This photobook begins with a dedication to the victims of the Deir Yassin massacre. Deir Yassin was a village just west of Jerusalem that was attacked by Jewish paramilitary groups on April 9, 1948. In the span of a few hours, between 100 and 110 Palestinians were killed, mostly while fleeing or held captive. The dedication establishes the author’s position and provides a historical context for the images that follow.
Sugarman traveled to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1997. The opening photographs share the first of many stories. He captures Palestinian youth throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem who then respond with ammunition and tear gas canisters. Sugarman himself is engulfed in the gas and is saved by a young boy with an onion who uses it to relieve his stinging eyes.
This photo collection is upfront and honest in its motivation, and Sugarman is not coy about where he stands. He wishes to show the “indomitable spirit of the Palestinian people who refuse to give up their identity and ancestral lands”. He even derives the title of the book (Speak Palestine, Speak Again) from a Palestinian folktale (Speak Bird, Speak Again), a story about justice that he likens to the greater Palestinian cause.
Sugarman is not a traditional photojournalist. He is a sociologist-turned-conflict photographer, having spent decades of his later years traveling through much of the world he had previously studied — Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia — to document war between nations, peoples, communities, neighbors. He is not a neutral storyteller, and the realities he captures are not popular.
Speak Palestine, Speak Again aims, I believe, to holistically document Palestinian life under occupation. So aside from action shots, Sugarman also documents street corners and local shops, mundane moments under the military enterprise, including Israeli soldiers standing guard over the population they seek to control. He also captures people at work and people at play. Later in the book he shows Palestine’s sweeping landscapes, much of which is still to this day banned to those born there.
The photographs published in this book were taken over a nearly four-month period in 1997, a particularly tense stretch of time between the two Intifadas.
Despite his focus on the current situation, Sugarman does make intentional historical references to further contextualize the Palestinian experience. One photograph is of the remnants of Lifta, a village much like Deir Yassin that was ethnically cleansed in 1947.
After the massacre at Deir Yassin and the subsequent depopulation of the village, many abandoned buildings were used to establish a now-dilapidated Israeli psychiatric hospital. Other buildings were cordoned off to create a Jewish neighborhood. In later years, the remaining ruins, including a Palestinian cemetery, were bulldozed to make room for a highway exclusively for Jewish Israeli use.
Lifta suffered a similar fate. For years, serious plans existed to demolish the remnant homes and structures that predated Israel’s founding. Plans also existed to replace the ruins with luxury homes. Today, the Israeli government classifies Lifta as a nature preserve where Israeli citizens and tourists can utilize depopulated homes as campgrounds.
Sugarman also photographs refugee children and families. The subjects are usually neutral, neither elevated nor objectified.
In addition, he documents a unique and heavily underrepresented population group: displaced Bedouin children who wound up in Al Eizariya in the West Bank.
The photographs are all black and white with high contrast. I cannot overstate how punchy the contrast is. Exposure is mixed: some photographs are underexposed, others are overexposed. The contrast exaggerates this further.
The book is arranged into sections, but the transitions are not explicitly marked. Roughly the first third documents everyday life. The next third focuses on militarization: Israeli soldiers, resistance to these soldiers, armed Jewish Israeli settlers, and protests. The final third provides a cross-section of everyday life under occupation, much like the first section. He shows butchers and police officers, charcoal makers and street vendors, all working to make a living within their social, economic, and political confines.
At the very end — and admittedly somewhat unexpectedly — are portraits of notable Palestinian figures.
What initially struck me about this photobook was that it was a self-published project. I appreciate the buy-in necessary to weave one’s best photographs into a story and to then publish and market a physical book. Making this more impressive is that this story is an unpopular one. This publication is a passion project, much like this website.
Ratings:
Photography: 3.5/5
The published photographs are contrast-heavy and many are harsh. I do appreciate the breadth of photographic styles — action, landscape, portraiture, documentary — but the variations exaggerate the inconsistent editing between stills.
Layout, text, and curation: 3.5/5
I wish the book was broken into sections, although I imagine Sugarman intentionally chose not to. His chosen photographs could have been better organized and the curation would have been more cohesive.
Messaging: 4.0/5
Sugarman does not depict Palestinians as weak, pathetic, or lowly. His dedication to the victims of Deir Yassin make clear where this project lies. His lens is otherwise neutral: he shows the sad, the fun, and the mundane (my favorite) in a non-objectifying manner. But because of vague themes and disorganized curation of the photographs, any more specific messaging is unclear.
Physical quality of the book: 4.0/5
I bought this book secondhand and it holds up well. The binding is solid. The corners roll, but that is expected in softcover books that are wider than they are tall. The paper is thick and semi-glossy and fingerprints do not readily show.
Accessibility: 4.0/5
To best appreciate this book, one should at least have a basic understanding of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Overall experience: 3.8/5 (averaged score)
Sugarman’s passion project is a nice addition for the serious collector. Speak Palestine, Speak Again is best appreciated as a survey of everyday life under occupation in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.