Photo stories
Photographer Gali Tibbon tells Steve Fairclough how she balances her assignments with personal work that often covers religion and faith
Jerusalem-based documentary photographer Gali Tibbon shares her amazing images of faith
Gali Tibbon attended art school in Jerusalem to study photography, but admits, ‘I mostly hated it when I was studying because it was more art oriented. I would go out and take pictures. Jerusalem is a very diverse place and it has a mixture of Christians, Muslims, Palestinians… I would come back with pictures and people would ask, “Where is this?” I would tell them to just get out of their bubble and cross the street; stories are everywhere.’
With early influences such as Henri CartierBresson, Josef Koudelka and Sebastião Salgado, her drive was always towards photojournalism, and as a first-year student, she had already begun shooting for the photo agency ZOOM 77, which supplied images for Yedioth Ahronoth – Israel’s biggest national daily newspaper.
Her career began in 1996 and since then her work has combined news coverage of conflict with magazine assignments and her personal projects, most of which cover the themes of religion and faith. Her photography has also brought her global recognition, including being named Travel Photographer of the Year in the World Photography Awards 2013 for her work in Lalibela, Ethiopia.
As well as working overseas, Gali has frequently documented the conflict in her native Israel. In fact, she was attending the Eddie Adams Workshop in the USA when the Second Israeli- Palestinian Intifada began. Gali recalls, ‘It was 2000 and Jerusalem was [being blown] up and I thought, “What the f**k am I doing here [in the USA]?” It was quite an overwhelming experience. I just wanted to go back to work.’
Her conflict work has had some ramifications for her. ‘ When you go to conflict zones, or you live in a country that’s constantly in a conflict, you have to have the right people around you to share what you’ve been through. You have to have one or two good friends that, after work, you can go and have a drink and a laugh with, just as a way to let off steam… dark humour or whatever. Some people stay with it buried inside until it explodes, but I have many other things in my life which balance me.’
Her work documenting religion, and the ceremonies that surround it, led to a unique opportunity in 2016. ‘It was the historical restoration of the tomb of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was quite amazing, in the archaeological sense, that someone just opened a tomb that had been there for hundreds of years, and I had the chance to be there. You go in at 7pm; they lock the doors and nobody opens the doors until 5am. The whole experience was quite amazing – historically and photographically.’
Gali’s award-winning project from Lalibela, Ethiopia – which is sometimes known as the ‘Jerusalem of Africa’ – was shot in black & white. It documented the annual pilgrimage of up to 60,000 pilgrims to a tiny village with churches carved out of rock. She explains, ‘One of the reasons I chose black & white is because I felt like I was kind of time travelling and that I was in a timeless place. The pictures I took could have been taken 70 or 100 years before. It felt very biblical and very pure.’
She notes, ‘Photojournalism is like having a front-row seat at history, in a sense. What other people might see at home on TV, I’m standing there when it happens. A lot of people think that photojournalism is glamorous, but it’s not. It also has an emotional price. At the end of the day photography is in your head; it’s in your eyes and not just in equipment. It’s up to you what you do with the equipment. I know that people see pictures from Israel, and they know that it’s mine without seeing my byline, so that’s a great thing to achieve.’ Gali Tibbon is an award-winning photojournalist based in Jerusalem. Her work has been exhibited at many major photography festivals in Europe, and she has been the subject of two documentary films. To find out more go to www.galitibbon.com.