Soldiers weep in the wreckage of a home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza on the Gaza border, where leftover wine and challah from a holiday meal are still on the table, four days after the October 7 massacre.

A mother lies on the sidewalk shielding her young children with her body as Hamas fires rockets over Ness Ziona in central Israel.  

And an IDF soldier is lowered headfirst, held by his feet, into a tunnel shaft in eastern Gaza used by terrorists to launch anti-tank missiles.

These are just a few of the vast collection of arresting images captured by award-winning photojournalist Ziv Koren over the last seven months. 

He grabbed his camera on October 7 and raced south on his motorbike to Sderot, a mile from Gaza, where he photographed bodies lying on the road and slumped over steering wheels.

He has spent almost every waking hour since documenting the atrocities and their aftermath.

“I have a mission,” says Koren, 53, a father-of-three. “And this mission is documenting history for the next generation to understand what happened here on October 7.”

Obsessed

He’s been photographing historical events and humanitarian issues in Israel and beyond – Ukraine, Haiti, India, South Africa – for many years. But nothing prepared him for the events of October 7, 2023.

“I’ve become obsessed with almost every single aspect of the atrocities that took place from that day on — the wounded soldiers, the hostages, the operation inside Gaza. This is what I’ve been documenting seven days a week, approximately 18 to 20 hours a day. I don’t have any desire to photograph anything else. I’ve been into Gaza 20 times,” Koren tells ISRAEL21c. 

He’s taken more than 300,000 pictures so far. Around 350 images are soon to be published in a book called October Seventh, his 22nd publication.

And 60 of the images are being displayed at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Tel Aviv in an exhibition that has already been to 40 countries.

He was keen to launch both the book and the exhibition as soon as possible, to counter the “denial culture.” 

Among the guests at the opening of the Peres Center exhibition, on May 3, were freed hostages, families of those still in captivity, wounded soldiers and civilians, people who lost limbs in the Hamas attacks and families who were burned at Kfar Aza.

“It was very moving to see all these people that I have photographed along the way. Viewing the images that tell the story of what happened to our nation was very emotional for them.” 

I’d rather be honest than impressive

Koren has attended only two of his exhibitions overseas, preferring to stay in Israel and carry on with his documentary mission. 

He went to the Reichstag, the German parliament in Berlin; and to Spain, where pro-Palestinian supporters demonstrated outside the exhibition venue. 

“Supporting the Gazans after October 7 is exactly like supporting Bin Laden after 9/11,” said Koren. “Most people who are shouting ‘From the river to the sea’ don’t know what river or what sea they’re talking about. It means the extinction of the State of Israel.

“I lost friends and kids of friends of mine, I’ve traveled back from the Gaza envelope for funerals, my daughters lost friends at the Nova party. I was at the kibbutzim seeing the atrocities firsthand, understanding – or maybe even not being able to understand – how families were slaughtered in their beds, women were raped, people had limbs cut off.”

He has a mantra – which appears across the top of his website and which he has tattooed on his arm: “I’d rather be honest than impressive.”

He will carry on photographing the aftermath of October 7 for as long as it takes. He says his pictures “play an important role in Israel’s PR, to prove that these things happened.”

The exhibition will run at the Peres Center for at least two months. Opening hours: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday 17:00-20:00, Saturday 10:00-15:00. Contact https://www.peres-center.org/en/ to book tickets.