Rimi Garbua

I am 14 and I live in Jaffa. I was born here. My father was Arab from Jaffa and my mother is Jewish. I try to explore both sides of my identity in my work.

In my photography I try to show the beautiful side of Jaffa but every time I find something beautiful, there is always something painful next to it.

I really enjoyed this project. I have always loved photography – since I was little – but I never had the chance to do it in a more professional way and then Leila came and I found out that I have the talent for photography. I would like to develop my work and become a photographer.

Even though parents and families try to keep the children safe and defend them from all kinds of bad things, even if you move to a very nice new house, you still see in every place drugs and violence, and young children in the street. Cigarettes and garbage everywhere. It’s not just in Jaffa, it’s everywhere. People say, ‘what are you doing in that awful place?’ but drugs and poor children are everywhere.

They are trying to build Jaffa again but even if there are very new and clean houses, two metres away you can find a poor family hungry for bread.

 ‘For Mummy’

I drew this picture after my father died. You can see here a little girl and her mother and the girl is trying to hug her mother. There is another drawing that I did in my closet of a young woman whose father is in prison. She tries to hug him and he takes his hands out of the cell to hug her but he can’t reach her.