Balata Refugee Camp by Ilkka Uimonen

Balata Refugee Camp

Spot News, second prize stories

1/3/2002

Israeli soldiers conduct a house-to-house weapons search, and mark searched premises with a Star of David. Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops launched an attack on the Balata Refugee Camp. Nine Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded.

Commissioned by: Magnum Photos for Newsweek

Photo Credit: Ilkka Uimonen

Photographer Ilkka Uimonen (b. Finland, 1996) sees the conflicts in the Middle East as a part of an endless cycle of violence. This began three millennia ago and entered a new phase in 2000 with the start of the second Intifada. In the two years that Uimonen devoted to recording it, the conflict claimed 600 Israeli and 1600 Palestinian lives. He sees his photographs as the record of a cycle of violence which, to his mind, will go on for the next 1000 years. As his justification he cites the philosophy of Carl Jung, who proposed that conflicts will never be resolved so long as emotions have displaced reason.