What a Photograph Can Do

A portrait of a wounded boy and his father at Sharjah's Xposure festival became a meditation on grief, hope, and the bond that holds families together.

- Seema Sangra

Saleh with his father, Rahim. Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

I stood inside the bright halls of Xposure 2026 in Sharjah, moving with the crowd, smiling at volunteers, nodding at familiar faces, and letting the festival's energy wash over me.

Photography lined every wall, and people drifted from frame to frame with phones raised and conversations flowing in low, excited tones.

I felt the usual thrill of being surrounded by images that promise new ways of seeing the world. Then I saw Saleh.

His portrait held me in place. One eye looked straight at the camera while the other lay hidden beneath a white bandage.

His teeth were shattered, his right arm ended halfway, and most of the fingers on his left hand were gone.

An explosion had torn into his small body and left marks that no child should ever bear.

Doctors had flown him to the United States for surgery, and the caption beside the frame named him with simple clarity: Saleh, a child caught in conflict.

The photograph came from Deanne Fitzmaurice, a Pulitzer Prizewinning photojournalist known for long documentary projects that follow people through their hardest seasons.

I felt her patience in the image, and I felt Saleh's presence even more strongly.

He was alive. That fact alone unsettled me and moved me at the same time.

I kept searching his open eye for a clue. I looked for hope, anger, fear, or disappointment. His expression resisted my attempt to define it.

I found myself asking a question that stayed with me for the rest of the day: how do we measure pain when it belongs to someone else?