Born to a father from Palestine and a mother from New York, Adam Rouhana always maintained a connection to his roots.

He grew up in Boston but would take annual trips to visit family and friends in his father’s homeland. He would stay with his grandparents in the limestone mountain range of Jabal al-Karmil, or Mount Carmel, with the Mediterranean Sea shimmering in the distance.

The village is considered part of so-called “Israel” but has always been Palestine to Rouhana.

His grandparents were fellahin, or farmers. Rouhana recalls pulling apart grape leaves from his teta’s garden, for example, to cook his favorite dish of warak enab, or grape leaves stuffed with rice and beef.

During those trips, early memories included playing hide and seek with cousins amongst the grove of lemon and apricot trees. He also recalls the heavy scents of ripe figs in the late summer.

These experiences at a young age made Palestine a paradise for Rouhana, who didn’t realize the occupation existed yet.

Once he turned 12 years old, Rouhana started to bring his family’s point-and-shoot camera on these trips.

As he got into his teenage years, he began to become more conscious of the disconnect between the reality in Palestine and the Western view of it. Often Palestinians are depicted as violent, disposable, lifeless, and miserable.

His images of life in Palestine that he’s captured over the two decades since photographing have captured life under occupation, actively attempting to dispel those Western representations.

In a 2024 Op-Ed for the New York Times, a rare instance of the publication giving voice to a Palestinian, Rouhana wrote:

“Instead, what I photograph is unconditional communal love, a rootedness and sense of historical belonging in the land, and a daily generosity and collective spirit that I rarely experience in America. Over the years, I’ve heard an endless number of stories passed down through generations that underscore a mosaic of social, cultural and religious pluralism.”

To further elaborate in his own words, Rouhana also told Musée Magazine:

“This work is a new interpretation of orientalism as a narrative gestalt — a philological reconstruction of images and politics that are reimagined through a redistribution of geopolitical, socio-cultural, and historical awareness into aesthetic form.

I believe that by decolonizing photography of Palestine through the internalization of indigenous image-making, we can decolonize our minds and achieve a more nuanced understanding of Palestinian reality.”

While images that show the effects of the apartheid and settler-colonial state are inevitable, Rouhana also shares photos of a quieter and more personal side of the Palestinian reality that’s often misrepresented or not shown at all.

However, the images are not meant to be definitive. Rouhana takes these photos to ask questions and have the viewer bring their own interpretation.

Being a Palestinian-American who has lived in the diaspora, Rouhana’s camera became a way for him to interact with the world and his fellow Palestinians in his homeland. 

He feels he can often go up to anybody, simply approach them, and get to know their story. He views photography as an extension of himself and how he engages with others.

Rouhana equates the quick nature of taking photos to sports, practicing until you can do it basically unconsciously, ready to go at any moment. Once you have a handle on the technical side and are one with your camera, you can move through the world in a more intuitive way. In this liminal space space, Rouhana feels, you can use a camera to define your own truth between perception and reality.

As noted in the 2023 Dazed Magazine feature of his photos, Art & Culture journalist Amah-Rose Abrams writes:

“An Oxford Master’s graduate, Rouhana backs up his work with a deeply considered and well-read approach. Citing the late academic Edward Said’s concept of the ‘permission to narrate’ – which is choosing to tell your story in the face of an oppressive counter-narrative – he changed the way he viewed his photographs of Palestine and began to look at them as a body of work.” 

The Master’s degree in Public Policy from Oxford in particular has allowed him to have a better understand of the narratives and way of thinking that pervades Western perspectives. Rouhana sees public policy as a lexicon for imperialism. “These tools provide insight into the discourse that the artist class does not often have access to,” he says.

Rouhana work of the West Bank can’t help but take into account that it’s an area filled with military checkpoints, illegal settlements, endless restrictions, and an overall targeting of Palestinian life. As he told The Art Newspaper:

“To be subjected to checkpoints, as if we're all criminals, is part of what it is to be Palestinian... but it's not everything.

Maybe because we've seen so much of it, it doesn't really evoke much (feeling) anymore. It's almost like through the photos, it becomes real. That occupation becomes actually permanent. I wanted to kind of undo some of that.”

Part of the reason Rouhana acknowledges he is able to take some of these photos, which can include IOF soldiers, is that he’s a white-passing U.S. citizen. It is otherwise dangerous for Palestinians to capture these images.

Since October 7th, the primary focus may be on Gaza – and justifiably so – but life in the West Bank has continued to worsen.

This year, Rouhana has spent more time there as part of a residency at one of Bethlehem’s leading art hubs, Dar Jacir.

Dar Jacir – short for Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research – is a “grass-roots independent artist–run initiative founded in 2014 and is located in our 19th century family home in Bethlehem.” It was originally built in the late 1880's to merge the historical and contemporary conditions of Bethlehem through the exchange and production of new art that looked towards the future.

The residency allows Palestinian and international artists the opportunity to live and work in Bethlehem in a more immersive way. Dar Jacir also helps to connect artists with local organizations, schools, and community centers to be able to host workshops, classes, talks, and collaborations.

Rouhana shoots on film and feels this is an important and necessary method for his work.

In an interview with This Is Yung magazine in March 2024, he was asked about his use of raw and unedited images in challenging the conventions of photography. Rouhana replied:

“I wouldn’t say that I’m challenging the conventions of photography — just the opposite, I’m returning to the foundations of photography — film photography.

Our perception of the world is imperfect; the brain makes mistakes. Digital photography is perfect — too perfect; it becomes superficial and, in this exact, modifiable perfection, can sometimes feel fake to me.

Film, on the other hand, often results in blemishes, mis-strokes, or blotches. I use film because, for me, film more accurately represents reality — our flawed reality.”

One can draw a line to Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour’s use of mud during the first Intifada, when he and other artists boycotted Israeli materials and instead began to make work using natural materials. At first, he didn’t like the cracks the mud left. He even tried to cover them up at first.

However, Mansour then started to realize the cracks were beautiful and in fact they were a fitting representation of Palestinian life under occupation, such as the hundreds of checkpoints that fragment the landscape. Rouhana is making a similar argument with the use of film for his photography.

For a couple of years now, Rouhana has been working on a series of photographs titled Before Freedom.

In May 2024, a selection of the series images were exhibited at Frieze’s No. 9 Cork Street gallery in London. It was the debut show of his work.

In a follow-up feature in Dazed Magazine about the exhibit, Rouhana said it felt important to take his film photos out of the online context they have so far been shared. At the show, the photos take on new context as several were printed at very large scales – some nearly life-sized – changing the interaction between the viewer and the photographic subject.

In June 2024, Rouhana followed it up with another set of images exhibited at Before Freedom Pt. 2: The Revolution Cannot Be Built on Dreams Alone at TJ Boulting for London Gallery Weekend.

In the same month of June, the images were also exhibited at the Belfast Photo Festival in Ireland.

Another sentiment Rouhana shared with Dazed, in regards to showing this photo series, felt particularly relevant amidst the ongoing Gaza genocide:

“The history, language, and religious plurality of Palestine have materialized over millenia congealing into a thick social fabric that is textured with long-standing traditions, knowledge and social-relations that Israel has not been successful in erasing.

To show my photos of Palestine now, is to say: we are here, in Palestine – and we’re not going anywhere. Palestinian life trumps Zionism’s attempt at Palestinian death.”