July 2007 • Issue 402


Ramallah bike

Photographed by Osama Silwadi

A Palestinian boy wearing a gas mask rides his bicycle to escape teargas thrown by Israeli soldiers during clashes with Palestinian stone throwers near the office of then-President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah in January 2002.

I was myself born in Ramallah. I began my career more than a decade ago during the first Intifada and have put my life in danger to document the ongoing violence and conflict. At the age of 19, I worked as a freelance photographer for various local newspapers but I have since worked for Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters, and am currently French photo agency GAMMA’s permanent correspondent for Palestine.

I have published Constant Giving and Creativity, a book on the lives of Palestinian women, and am now working on a project to document the lives of the West Bank Bedouin. I founded Apollo Images, a Ramallah-based photo agency, in 2004.

In October 2006 I was critically wounded while standing at my office window in Ramallah. A demonstration walking past the front of the office building had two armed men who fired randomly in the air and I was hit twice. I have only just come out of hospital.

Osama Silwadi

Apollo Images www.apollo.ps osilwadi@apollo.ps




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