"Choosing to Live": The project about the October 7th generation
Romi Midani, 25, set out to photograph her friends whose lives have changed since that "Black Saturday" — Nova survivors, soldiers, and young people who lost their loved ones. From this, the project "So if this is life — let us live" was born, shot simply, with a black screen, a chair, and one person in front of the camera.
October 7th changed us all. Since that "Black Saturday," the pain, the trauma, and the struggle with what happened continue to find their way into the world of creation — in films, series, books, and works of art that attempt to process a reality that changed in an instant. Now comes a social and sensitive photography project that seeks to bring the younger generation to the forefront, those who bear the burden and deal with life afterward.
"So if this is life — let us live" is a photography project by Romi Midani, 25, from Kibbutz Givat Brenner, a photographer and undergraduate psychology student at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo. As part of the project, she photographed young people whose lives have changed since October 7th — including Nova survivors, soldiers dealing with post-traumatic stress, and those who lost family members and friends.
"In the last two years, I feel that something in me has changed, that in all of us, something has changed," Midani wrote upon publishing the photos. "Something shifted in our generation, and a new internal listening was born within us. This project was born from the desire to create a small pause in the middle of the bustling street. A moment where a person sits in front of me, exposed before everyone, and remains with themselves. Exposed, but most of all, true to themselves."
"The people photographed here are young people who touched the pain of this period up close. Without too much scenery. A black background, a chair, and one person in front of me. These are minimalist street photos, but they tell a broad story. They tell of the gaze of young people who choose every day to be here. To express identity. To hold onto dreams, even when it is unclear what tomorrow will bring. And perhaps precisely because it is unclear."
"In the portraits and body shots, there is a quiet presence that says — I am here. I am not surviving, I am living," she added. "At the end of the shooting day, the lights went out, the camera turned off, we remained with friends, sitting and talking. And then a friend said, 'What a life, huh? You can't know what will happen.' And a friend answered him, 'Yes, just like that, in a boom, everything can go.' And another friend — 'Yes... but that's life, so we will live.' And there was silence."
"And in that silence, I understood: between pain and bereavement, loss and struggle, and that something that holds us, that asks to be held onto — there is a generation here that chooses to live. And I just wanted to be there, to give it a place. So if this is life — let us live."
