Ahmad Al-Bazz Photographs the Erasure of Palestine

The exhibition 'Activestills. Documenting Life, Death and Resistance in Palestine' runs until July 21, 2026, at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, featuring works by the collective Activestills. Photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz, a member of the collective, has also published the book 'The Erasure of Palestine' with Museums Etc. Al-Bazz, who lives in Nablus in the West Bank, obtained a permit from the Israeli army at the end of 2020 and spent three years visiting destroyed Palestinian villages and cities. He photographed sites of ethnic cleansing from 1948 and earlier in Mandatory Palestine—over 531 villages, towns, and neighborhoods—as well as places erased on the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967 (over 300 villages) and 62 villages in the West Bank eliminated since October 7, 2023. His images deliberately show no human figures because, as he states, 'there were no people to photograph'—only Israeli settlers remain. The project argues that ethnic cleansing is the foundation of Zionism. Al-Bazz's first visited village was Jamasin, now part of Tel Aviv, where no remains were found. He also photographed a Palestinian house used by Tel Aviv University and a Palestinian cemetery next to it. Before 1948, Jaffa had about 120,000 Arab Palestinians; 117,000 were expelled after the Nakba.