Ten Portraits x Ten Stories

Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Mohammed, a Palestinian Bedouin boy, is 10 and stands under a tree with an old gas mask on his head. He found it near his home in E1, Area C. It is something people in the community wear when tear gas is fired at them by the Israeli forces. Today he uses it as a toy. At the time Israeli Defence Force policies and practices in Area C violated basic rights and undermined the presence and development of Palestinian communities, often resulting in forced displacement and increased dependency on humanitarian assistance. Some drawings become less relevant over time, we had hoped that the lives of 10 year olds in Palestine and Gaza would improve, but the reality - 10 years on couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - In 2011 Hasnaa was pregnant with twins, living in Eastern Ghouta, a Sunni area of Damascus. By the time she was full-term, her husband, a Palestinian Syrian who worked for the state, left her, accusing her of being a “terrorist” because the students she taught came from Sunni families. Not long after giving birth, she began joining protests against the regime. In 2015 she was arrested. She was transferred from one security branch to another—five in all—the most notorious of them being al-Khatib, where she was beaten and forced to watch others being tortured. She shared a two-by-two-meter cell with fourteen other women. When she returned home, she lived under siege for three years. Finally driven from her home by the government’s bombing campaign, Hasnaa moved her family to a nearby shelter in Harjalleh. We spent the last two months of 2018 living underground, she told me. My children didn’t know what a banana was, or an orange, or chocolate. Eventually she escaped to Azaz in northern Syria where she worked to establish a network of several dozen female journalists reporting only on women’s issues in Syria, known as the Akhbarna Network (“Our News Network”). Syrian women should not accept leadership, social, or political positions that are less than what they truly deserve, she told me. Women must support each other by forming alliances, groups, or unions through which they can advocate for their rights and stand up for oppressed women’s causes.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Ahmed age 10, had lost his mother, his brother, and his right leg just seventy-two hours earlier in a government shelling. Photographers often talk about hiding behind their cameras … I remember wanting to hide behind my drawing board as the nurse pulled back the covers to show me the damage to his tiny body. At the end of his bed sat Yassar - his father - and he said “art can make no difference”. That line stuck with me.. I have been trying to prove him wrong ever since… although I often wonder whether he is right. The mass of white space gives you a sense of how quickly I wanted to finish the drawing and move on. Although I still believe that illustration can be a thoughtful and dignified way of depicting these horrors.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Tamara lives outside Minsk in Belarus, she is a university educated mother of two. Her son Pavel was executed on death row in 2012. Under Lucashenko Belarus is the last country in Europe to still practise capital punishment. She talked fondly about how as a young woman she was a sprinter, then an ice skater – and to prove it she got down on the floor of her kitchen and did the splits. Now ruined by the loss of her son and stigmatised by society for his crime she is forced to retreat into her small home. Tamara received her last letter from her son Pavel on 16 April 2012 asking her to send more books. Months later she received a note from his lawyer saying “ [he] left the prison with his personal belongings in accordance with his sentence” His body would not be handed over.. She was never allowed a funeral, the death was never confirmed and she doesn’t know where his body is buried.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - “Just ask for Mustafa al-Taee” is the advice from the local store keeper. Which we do and we are directed straight to his house in Hamam al Alil. Mustafa is a locally famous artist. Throughout the ISIS occupation of Hamam al Alil he drew the atrocities that he witnessed being carried out on the local people and soldiers. He describes how he finds drawing therapeutic and how he can’t stop doing it. Piled in the corner are tens of these drawings; people with their heads cut off, soldiers hung upside down on barbed wire. When ISIS discovered Mustafa was drawing, a practice that is ‘haram’ or forbidden he was beaten. He was told he could never do it again. But now he exhibits his work in the town as a reminder of the horrific occupation.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Nazak, or Mama Nazak as she is known in Syria, was a geography teacher at the university in Damascus. Having been hung by her hands for 20 days by the Hafez al Assad regime for not supporting the Baath party, she left Syria in 1980, only to return six years ago. Mama Nazak had three sons. Her son Fras was killed fighting for the Free Syrian Army against the regime. Juan was shot in the lower arm whilst trying to save Fras and remains disabled. And Judi on a separate occasion was shot in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. She described what had happened to them like this: “You can say I had three flowers in my garden, one was eaten by the beast and two trampled down with the beast’s foot and walked away.”
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Khalid’s story is hard to witness, but it is one of hope. I met Khalid in the same refugee camp where I met and drew Mama Nazak. Mama Nazak had adopted him. Khalid was 11 when his father was shot at home by the government militia with a heavy machine gun. As he described it, splitting his father in two. Him and his mother managed to escape to the Turkish border. But on the way they were stopped by a military check point.His mother, realising what was happening, dropped Khalid from the car and told him to run. He did, but like all little boys, he stopped, turned around to see his mother. He saw her dragged from the car and decapitated. Wrapped in his Syrian opposition colours (explain what this means) he sat with us and recounted this story from only 20 days earlier. I don’t think I have ever met a braver person. He went on to say “I want to be a doctor to heal the injured people of the war and if somebody enters our house again, I want to protect my family. I want to protect others if somebody wants to enter their house.” Perhaps if people could share the same attitude of this 11 year old and the amazing Mama Nazak, the peace process could demand more respect for the civilians.
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories - Abdullo is a young man from the Rasht valley in Northern Tajikistan. Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries on earth - the economy relies on remittances from Russia. I followed Abdullo from his rural home, leaving behind his family and making the four day train ride to Moscow, via Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. There he worked as an informal labourer, living in the flats he was decorating and sending money back to his family. It was short lived, like many others he was deported and returned home soon after. This drawing was made for a New York Times Opdoc film called “2300 Miles to Work” directed by Tim Brown @tabrown and produced by @joe schottenfield
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories
Ten Portraits x Ten Stories

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This portrait series connects viewers with real people living through conflict around the world — the human stories behind the headlines. Each drawing is shaped by first-hand testimony, capturing experiences of war, displacement, resilience, and survival that rarely receive the attention they deserve.

These stories matter. They deserve to be heard, remembered, and kept alive. By engaging with the portraits and sharing the lives behind them, audiences help carry these testimonies beyond the places they were lived.