Jacob Lazarus turns surveillance footage from the West Bank into an act of resistance

In January 2022, London-born artist Jacob Lazarus joined a tour of the Jordan Valley, West Bank. He visited Palestinian farmers and herders, whose livelihoods have been severely dismantled by state-backed settlements. “That day, witnessing their resilience amidst unbearable oppression left me with a deep sense of responsibility,” he says.

Jacob was working with the Jordan Valley Activists, an Israeli solidarity group supporting Palestinian communities. Cameras – in the form of CCTV, smartphones and body or dash cams – are central to their activism. “Filming acts as both a weapon of deterrence and a means of evidence collection,” says Jacob. Using the organisation’s footage from the last seven years, the artist initiated a collaborative installation and publishing project, Frames of Annexation. Back in London, he screened the videos on loop, and rigged the monitor to a nearby printer. Visitors were encouraged to press the spacebar as an act of intervention. This would trigger a screenshot to print. After the show, with the support of Zone6, he bound the prints into a book, in the exact order they were printed that day.

“My goal was to move beyond the fleeting consumption of violent imagery on social media, creating a space where viewers could engage deeply with the archive and reflect on the slow violence of the occupation,” he says. “Seeing the project take shape as a collective art piece reaffirmed its purpose: to foster deeper, more intentional engagement with violent imagery.” The resulting object is a tactile, thought-provoking product of collective resistance, made collaboratively by Jacob, his audience, the Jordan Valley Activists and the Palestinian communities they work with.

One striking sequence in the book features Moshe Sharvit, a notorious settler who has displaced numerous Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley. Another image documents the day Jacob was detained under this settler’s command. “He summoned soldiers, and we were held for hours before being sent to a police station the following day,” he remembers. “That moment crystallised the power dynamics in the region – the intersection of settler authority, military enforcement, and activist resistance.”

Jacob now lives in West Jerusalem, where he continues to document the occupation of Palestinian. He was galvanised to act partly because of his upbringing and education in Jewish primary and secondary schools. “I was exposed to narratives that glorified Israel while ignoring its colonial reality,” he says. At university, he became more critically engaged, leading to a practice that now straddles the intersection of human rights activism and visual storytelling.

As the violence continues, and in a world where we have become so used to seeing images of brutality, what can photography offer? “Art and photography play a critical role in exposing the crimes of the occupation,” says Jacob. “Ultimately, photography is more than a means of documentation; it’s a way to amplify marginalised voices, challenge dominant narratives, and build connections in the face of systemic injustice.”