Rewarded for Courage; Palestinian Photojournalist Fatima Shbair Won German Journalism Award

As young as her 24 years old, the Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Shbair has won the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Photojournalism award in Germany. She was the youngest woman to win “Anja Award” for her project “11 Days of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” that includes unique and special moments of tension, fierceness, harm, devastation, and hope. This was all captured from Gaza City in May 2021, as the Foundation said.  
 

The Youngest Winner 

“A woman walks alone past bombed-out windowless buildings in Gaza, black high heels on gray rubble.” This image of life during war was one of many captured by a young Palestinian photojournalist in May, Fatima Shbair. 

The astonishing set of images has earned Fatima Shbair the 2021 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award, given by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF). 

Shbair, 24 years old, is the youngest journalist in the competition to be bestowed the honor, which “was named for a German Associated Press photographer who was killed in 2014 while on assignment in Afghanistan.” 

The award honors women photojournalists who take serious risks and face death to capture humanity in horrific circumstances, shedding light on underreported stories. 

Through her striking portfolio, Fatima succeeded to rise above more than 100 applications that represented women photojournalists from more than 40 countries. Indeed, she is the youngest winner of the ‘Anja Award’ up to now.  Her portfolio untitled “11 Days of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” forms unique moments of tension, violence, devastation, and hope all captured from Gaza City in May 2021, according to the International Women's Media Foundation. 
 

Early Life 

The youngest self-taught photographer was born in 1997 in Gaza City. She studied business administration for three years at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. However, she changed her orientation objectives to studying journalism. In 2019, she started in photojournalism, working in the field, covering the escalation by Israeli forces targeting Gaza City. 

Because there were no institutions for photojournalism in Gaza, Fatima found herself spending seven years, from 2013 to 2017, learning through experience. 

“It all started as I live in a conflict zone and have a message that I want to convey to the world,” she said. The youngest photographer had always wished to carry the camera and transmit the image to be the voice of untold stories. To achieve that, she worked as hard as she could and finally, she has achieved part of her dream. As a female photojournalist she has encountered many difficulties because the society in Gaza is conservative. 

She taught herself photography while documenting what she calls "different" daily life in Gaza in 2019.  

Before the end of 2020, she was able to work as a freelancer and sell the pictures she took to international agencies like Getty Images. 

The 2021 Gaza War was the most difficult experience for Fatima. It was the first war she covered for so long; it was eleven days non-stop, as she described it. In addition to the tough conditions, she was living in, the Palestinian photographer was worried about her family at home in the north, at the same time she was concentrating on what was happening in Gaza. Fatima declared that the war brought her more experience and awareness of the working environment in the field. As a photojournalist, she realized every day just how important the camera is, “how it can convey details of the city where some two million people have been living in an open-air prison since the blockade of Gaza was imposed in 2006.” The city has been separated from the world and with only four to six hours of electricity a day, “it is hard to do even the simplest things.” 

 

Inspiring Images 

Fatima’s body of work that was shot under tough conditions was just amazing. It caught the attention of the International Women's Media Foundation judges. 

Members of the judging board "were really impressed with how she captured these incredibly beautiful images among the wreckage of an ongoing bombardment that she was also living through herself," Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation, told VOA. 

Elisa continued to say that this little photographer was part of this conflict and she was really trying to survive as a civilian, in addition to trying to survive as a photojournalist, which was pretty telling," Muñoz said. 

The jury was amazed by the moments which Fatima presented through her captions. They were so expressive and well cohesive as they exposed the crimes of the Israeli forces. 

Fatima’s aim was to give Gaza a voice, so the World could see all the suffering the Palestinians were living. She wanted to say also that there is always hope and the People will never give up, and she did that.