Photographer Misan Harriman gave lessons and equipment to young people who have fled Gaza – and the pictures they took are funny, revealing and often heartbreaking
A boy pulling a funny face, a sleeping pet, a grandfather in his chair – all ordinary scenes from life that many of us would take for granted. What makes these images special is they were taken by Palestinian children, refugees displaced to Egypt since Israel’s war in Gaza, making sense of their new, if hopefully temporary, home and what they have escaped from.
“It’s familial life, relationships, and although they’ve seen so much, you’re not seeing trauma, you’re not seeing the faces of people that have given up,” says the photographer Misan Harriman, an ambassador for Save the Children. “Even though none of these kids know what the future brings and there’s huge uncertainty, they are living in the moment. They’re doing their best to thrive and learn.” The camera, he adds, is “a seemingly inanimate object that can help you find answers to a world that is confusing, and even more confusing for some of these children.”
Misan Harriman, centre, with some of the children involved in the project. Photograph: Anna Sass/Save the Children