Activestills – Documenting life, death and resistance in Palestine

Since 2005, the Activestills photography collective has been documenting Israeli colonial violence and Palestinian resistance.

Activestills was formed by activist photographers who wanted to document and support Palestinian popular resistance. What started as a small group, grew into a larger collective of Palestinian and international photographers, as well as Israelis who reject Israeli settler colonialism while understanding their position as being part of it. The collective sees its work as part of the struggle against all forms of oppression, racism, and violations of the basic right to freedom. Activestills’ constantly evolving online archive consists of more than 56,000 photos documenting life and death under Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.

This exhibition presents a selection of the collective’s work of over two decades, focusing on the attacks on Gaza and the current genocide, the ongoing ethnic cleansing across Palestine as well as the remains of villages depopulated by Zionist forces in 1948. Activestills’ work strives to portray Palestinians not only as victims but as individuals and a people with diverse political agency in their struggle. Activestills perceives its work of documenting and archiving as a form of narrative reclamation and resistance to the colonial practice of destruction, control, co-option, appropriation and erasure against Palestinian lives and voices.

Since October 2023, more than 200 Palestinian journalists, photographers and other media workers have been killed, making the genocide in Gaza the deadliest period for journalists in modern history. With this exhibition we wish to pay tribute and demand justice for our colleagues in Gaza –those who were killed, assaulted, arrested and dehumanised – and those who, despite the risks and the horrors, continue to document - for the world to see and for us to act.