(Applause)
Thank you very much.
When I was little I studied in a public school.
Despite being small, it had a great cultural richness.
In my class there were people from all over: from China, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico;
a boy of Italian roots and me, Spanish-Palestinian.
Despite the diversity, some of us were harassed for years
for other children, local kids that showed that way
their fear of everything they did not know.
At that time my parents worked most of the day,
so my brother and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house.
(Sorry)
My granny, teacher and wonderful cook was affectionate and strong at the same time.
My yayo, one of the best people I’ve ever met, was someone good.
He was educated, artist; He was self-taught.
He was a carpenter, bookbinder, Esperantist,
but above all he had a great sense of humor.
He was a strong person, with strong ethical values.
A lot of my people and my sense of justice come from him.
I learned a lot in those years.
They made me ask myself a lot of questions
about identity, family, ethics, the world,
and how I was supposed to fit in.
But I always felt that there was a void in one part of my life.
I grew up with my maternal family member in Spain
and I hardly had contact with my paternal family
because of the difficult situation in Palestine, for which my father had to stay
several decades away from home.
I remember talking on the phone with my paternal grandparents,
but the language difference was really a disadvantage
and being very small I did not have the opportunity to meet them
as I would have liked.
As time passed, I was asking more questions about my identity.
Both the cultural and the relational.
That is, the image we have of ourselves
with respect to what surrounds us.
I wanted to know more about the other part of my family, my father’s family.
Who were they? What does it mean to be Palestinian?
What does it mean to be a Palestinian in the diaspora?
To be studying photography as part of my career in archeology,
which I never finished,
since I’ve always wondered, since I’ve always thought rather
that it is necessary to know your history in order to understand your present
and be able to build your future correctly.
So I started taking pictures of my father’s Palestinian friends,
which did not take me too seriously because they’ve seen me grow up,
and let’s say that they saw me as the girl who was giving the can with the camera,
but when I moved to Barcelona to finish my photographic studies
I contacted the Palestinian community of Catalonia, to which I portrayed,
maybe in an attempt to understand myself
through his features, his hands.
In an attempt to find people a little like me,
neither from here nor from there.
With the same face of eternal foreigner
and an infinite desire to find the home, to fit.
I felt that my happiness depended on it,
to find my place, the correct label.
Maybe because of a feeling of belonging
that I wanted and that I never had when I grew up.
I thought to discover and build my own identity
It was like removing a veil from before your eyes,
and that once I got rid of him, I would realize who I really was,
and that from there I would have to choose between Spain and Palestine
because people always ask me: “Maysun, and how do you feel,
Spanish or Palestinian? “
I’ve always felt the pressure of having to choose,
of having to comply with the standards, oblivious to my origin.
And at the same time, I felt half of it:
half Spanish, half Palestinian.
Of course, I was wrong.
How someone could feel complete in terms of identity
if it is defined as one half.
All that process in which I discovered and built my own identity
had as its highlight the first trip I made to Syria in 2009,
before the war, when I participated in a summer camp
of young Palestinians from around the world.
The essence of the event was to analyze and debate the Palestinian identity.
When we ask ourselves what three things define the Palestinian identity,
a girl from the West Bank said: “To be a Palestinian you need
speak Arabic, live in the Middle East and be Muslim. “
I told him: “Then I am not Palestinian at all.
I was born and raised in Spain, I do not speak Arabic almost and I’m not a believer. “
At the end of the debate we agreed
that identity is something much more complex and personal
that a name, your origin or what language you speak.
That opened my eyes and made me understand
that did not fit that definition of Palestine or anyone’s standards,
not even in those apparently similar to me.
Those young Americans-Palestinians, Italians-Palestinians,
and most importantly, I realized that we were not halves.
In fact, we were more than a whole.
Each of us was lucky to have more than one origin,
More than one story to tell.
I discovered that my cultural identity was entirely Spanish
and entirely Palestinian, and none of them at the same time.
That really made me grow, enriched me.
Neither color, nor origin, nor language, nor gender,
nor the way of thinking of a person define it.
It is the knowledge and understanding of our own identity
what completes us
Do you know how I felt? Free.
As if I took a weight off.
I felt capable of anything, powerful, strong,
and that helped me understand that I had always been at home.
That the home is something that is within oneself.
That is the power to know your own identity.
And what does a person’s identity have to do?
with their social skills, with their work
or with the success you may have in life?
All.
The knowledge of our identity allows us to develop as people,
recognize our virtues and our shortcomings
to achieve our goals, whether individual or collective.
It allows us to go further.
To understand better and find my own way I used several tools.
The painting was one of them.
Painting is very important to me
because it helps me to connect with my interior and balances me,
but perhaps the most important thing was photography.
I remember the first time I felt the call of journalism inside me.
It was November 9, 1989.
I was about to turn nine.
I remember watching the news
with my parents and with my brother during dinner.
Even though I did not fully understand what was happening,
I realized, by their faces of joy,
that something truly important was happening.
The Berlin wall had fallen.
I saw people destroying what was left of him.
Climbing Screaming. Crying of happiness.
People went from one place to another to make sure that they really
They could move freely.
I felt a tremendous emotion,
but it was not enough for me to watch it on television.
Somehow I needed to be there, present.
See it with my own eyes. Feel the sounds, the smells.
I needed to be a witness to fully understand the situation.
It was not until the end of many years later,
when I was already telling stories,
when I realized that the seed of journalism
There was always there, lethargic.
Knowing my cultural and relational identity was vital
to understand my own potential and know what I wanted to do in life.
One of my Palestinian friends asked me if I wanted to go on a trip with him
in 2006, to the Middle East, to visit some Palestinian refugee camps
and to be able to verify how people lived with my own eyes.
That trip changed my life.
I realized that part of my identity consisted of a deep need
to have images what happens around me, what happens in the world.
Especially the people who can not be there to see it.
I felt I was happy telling stories
and that at the same time was a great responsibility.
In addition to an internal and external knowledge tool,
I understood that journalism could be a way of contributing something to society,
to increase intercultural awareness through images,
to fight for a better world.
I have always wanted to be useful to society
and I think that this work can be useful in some way.
Today, more than 10 years after the beginning of my work, I still think about it.
It is not a camera that is needed to understand and change the world.
The desire to know oneself and what surrounds you is the key to achieve it.
We can use a camera, a pencil, our voice, or any other tool
to try to make this a better world,
but what drives us to do it, to go further, to work more,
To overcome our own limits is the passion to know.
That was what I felt with nine years.
The passion for knowing helps us to know who we are and what we want from life.
It helps us make decisions.
This knowledge is what makes us truly independent,
but it also unites us as a community.
Knowledge is the glue of society.
During these years working as a journalist
I have tried to be an invisible observer but never silent
of the story that the human being draws every day.
I have seen perhaps more shadows than lights on my path.
Terrible stories that should not happen.
I have learned about the war,
about death,
about poverty,
about displacement, (Sorry)
about loneliness,
and how people always look for the same
regardless of where they come from or what language they speak:
a place to call home and someone to share it with.
It’s precisely these images, these stories,
which I try to show,
especially when the media
they stop reporting because it’s not news,
and nobody is worried about what happened to the one who lost everything.
It’s important to know.
Knowing the information is a right.
But my images, your work, our day to day,
it can feel like a half, incomplete,
if we are not able to really know ourselves,
in deep.
If we do not put our heart, our ideals,
our passion and our empathy deeply in them.
That’s why I try to talk about the losses of the people,
but also about their vistories, about their ability to resist, to survive,
especially in extreme situations like those of a war.
For this, to make difficult, complicated decisions,
they have had to know each other well, both individually and collectively.
People, regardless of where they come from and their circumstances,
Get ahead.
Sometimes in an improvised manner, others desperate, but they try.
The search for independence, personal fulfillment, happiness,
they are, after all, the essence of the human being.
That is why our knowledge, the knowledge of our identity,
of who we are and what we are capable of achieving and achieving
it makes us strong, it makes us independent.
In a word: it makes us free.
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
Be First to Comment