In February 2010, Australian photographer Jim McFarlane was documenting local children at an after-school club in Gaza City. Teachers had asked each child to bring in a sentimental item – something important to them. “One young boy, maybe 12 years old, brought along a blue plastic bag,” McFarlane tells me, his voice breaking. “Inside the bag were some bomb fragments and a tin, and inside the tin were the ashes of his father, who he saw get killed. That’s something I’ll always remember.”
The emotional encounter was one of many during a 10-day assignment in Gaza, where McFarlane was working as part of a trio of international photographers. They were there to document the lives of people in the wake of the Israeli incursion of December 27, 2008, known as Operation Cast Lead, which took place a year previously, and killed 1,417 Gazans, including 313 children. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed in the period’s violence, four from friendly fire.
