Skip to main content
CorrespondentCorrespondent
Facebook Twitter This site (RSS)
Languages

Search form

Menahem Kahana
Photographer based in Jerusalem.
AFP / Menahem Kahana

As memories fade

Monday 27 January 2020

How do you interrupt an Auschwitz survivor in an interview as he strays way off topic? How do you balance your need to get his personal story with his need to tell you the history of the Holocaust in a world where the memory of the Nazi genocide is fading further and further into history? What imprint does hearing stories of evil over and over again leave on you?

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death camp by Soviet troops, the AFP team in Jerusalem interviewed 11 survivors to produce a multimedia package.

Each journalist faced his own difficulties in doing so. Text reporter Michael Zeev Blum, who grew up in a world where the memory of the Holocaust was ever-present, searched for details of his grandfather whose name he bears. Photographer Menahem Kahana couldn’t help but hear echoes of his parents. Bureau chief Guillaume Lavallee kept thinking of how to keep a handle on and do justice to the heartbreaking material. Video journalist Ahikam Seri heard the stories in a new light and saw something he hadn’t noticed before.

Read more
  • AFP / Menahem Kahana
  • AFP / Menahem Kahana
  • AFP / Jack Guez
  • AFP / Menahem Kahana

Of chickens, fishes and sins

Wednesday 12 October 2016

"This time of year is always busy for us news photographers in Israel," writes Menahem Kahana, a staff photographer based in Jerusalem.

"Between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, there are lots of rituals among the ultra-religious community that make for really colorful photos."

Read more
AFP / PHOTOGRAPHER'S NAME

Chasing a dance to relax

Monday 25 January 2016

"Maybe it’s because I do so many pictures of funerals and of people being killed that I like to do something else," writes AFP's veteran Jerusalem-based photographer Menahem Kahana.

"Maybe it’s because when I was a kid, I was a bird watcher. I don’t know. But this is the stuff I do for fun."

Read more
AFP Photo / Menahem Kahana

Desert murmurations

Wednesday 4 February 2015

"I’ve been watching out for them for a month now," writes AFP photographer Menahem Kahana. "Half a billion birds migrate here each year during the European winter, and among them the starlings are unique. They come in a cloud, tens, hundreds of thousands of them, and if you are lucky enough to be in the right spot, just before sunset, you can see them dance."

Read more
AFP Photo / Menahem Kahana

War as spectator sport in the Golan Heights

Tuesday 16 September 2014

"It is before dawn on the Golan Heights and a squad of Syrian government troops are engaged in fierce combat with rebels of the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front", writes AFP Jerusalem-based photographer Menahem Kahana. "The clashes are taking place just metres from the barbed wire fence that separates the Syrian side of the strategic plateau from the Israeli-held sector. I am watching from an abandoned Israeli army bunker, around 100 metres from the demarcation line. This is war, taking place right before my eyes, and yet it could almost be another world. I am not a target, and none of the fighters cares remotely what is happening on the Israeli side."

"I have the strangest sense of being in a movie theatre."

Read more

 

About AFP

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a leading global news agency providing fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the events shaping our world and of the issues affecting our daily lives. Drawing from an unparalleled news gathering network across 151 countries, AFP is also a world leader in digital verification. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world in six languages, with a unique quality of multimedia storytelling spanning video, text, photos and graphics.

Copyright © 2019, AFP

Our other blogs

  • Focus (in Spanish)
  • Making-of (in French)
  • Tumblr AFP Photo
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
Facebook Twitter This site (RSS)