 So my project is called Home Away from Home, Little Palestine by the Bay. It's a long title, but this is a big topic. I recorded oral histories to accompany these black and white photographs from the Bay Area's Palestinian community, the second largest community in the United States. At this exhibition, you'll be able to hear the voices while looking into the photograph faces of the people telling their stories. Hearing their voices, I hope, will help you see more than just the photograph. In fact, that is really what this project is about, giving voice to a community that has long been denied one. I did this project because I felt it's about time Palestinians got to tell their own stories and their own words in this country, and my subjects were all happy for the opportunity, each in their own way. Many of them have done so not just for this project. A professor of law writes op-eds in national newspapers. A deli owner sits with his customers talking about Palestine. A mother insists that Palestine be included in the International Day activities at her child's school and then makes presentations herself to other schools. Indeed, that is one of the things that struck me most about these stories, how time and distance have not diminished the Palestinian diasporas connection to the homeland. The audio is a vital component to the success of this project. The premise is very simple. If you could actually hear the voice of the storyteller while looking into their eyes, the connection will be more intimate and profound. Identifying as Palestinian is not so much about yearning for a lost past, but about a very real aspiration to attain human rights and security in their original homeland. People want to build on their memories and nostalgia. They don't want to simply rely on them for their identity. At long last, Palestinian Americans are gaining their voice in this country, especially among the young, but there are people who have been begun trying to silence them and their supporters with accusations of anti-Semitism. I'm not a scholar on anti-Semitism, but I do know that being pro-Palestinian is not anti-Semitic and unapologetically demanding your rights is not anti-Semitic and nor is being anti-Zionist despite what some people try to insist. The portraits provide a very ingenuous look at the personalities and lives of these people. There's not much artifice around them. It's the person at or near their home. They were shot simply and straightforward. I feel this is necessary to emphasize their humanity. I interviewed and photographed 27 Palestinian Americans. I used medium format black and white film instead of digital. I believe film retains an inherent if symbolic integrity that digital cannot achieve. That's important to me because I have always felt that Palestinian credibility is often questioned here. The photographs are even printed on traditional silver gelatin paper. I also only used available light, no strobes, soft boxes, or reflectors. My approach was to minimize the technical artifice of photography in order to allow greater intimacy. Also, the images are made with the idea of keeping the focus on the subject and not on the artist or the technique. I want this to be about them. In the exhibit, you'll see short transcripts placed adjacent to each portrait along with a QR code linked to an edited audio of the interview. This QR code can be scanned by your smartphones for easy listening. Again, adding to a sense of intimacy like a personal phone conversation. Most of the interviews presented are shortened to between 5 and 10 minutes. The complete interviews, I hope, will be included in the future book on this project. I discovered early on that employing an informal and conversational style and sharing my own experiences created an atmosphere of ease and trust. I think you can sense this in the interviews. You may feel you are listening in on a conversation or even better that you're being spoken to directly or individually. I did this project simply because I want you to see yourselves in these photos and stories. I want you to see your own family, friends, and neighbors in them. That may be expecting a lot, but I know it can happen. Once you've listened to or read some of the stories and if you are an immigrant or your parents and grandparents are immigrants, you may even recognize some of the feelings that are expressed here. Okay, well, that's about it unless somebody has some questions. Well, Chicago is the largest Palestinian community in the country. And as far as the second question goes, the climate here is very Mediterranean for one thing. I don't know if that's everybody's reasons for coming here. I never asked any of them that question. But it does feel like they're a lot, except maybe the fog. So my question was, why did your family decide to come to the Bay Area instead of another part of the country or another part of the world? Actually, my family did come to New York. We came to New York and stayed there 10 years, then moved down to the D.C. area for they're still there. In fact, I'm the only one who came out and had nothing to do with climate or politics or anything like that, other reasons. Have you, when you were interviewing people, did you find a difference between people whose land is now part of, quote unquote, Israel proper versus settlement versus versus other areas that would be part of the new Palestine? I could not figure out any obvious differences. People are connected to the country, the land, the families, the history. Some man-made line enforced by an army is not making that different. Joe, what a wonderful and powerful tool this is, the storytelling that you have brought to us. I just wanted to say that it was an honor also to be with you. The intro didn't mention that you also studied photography right here at City College of San Francisco, where you learned your craft. I'm wondering what plans, if any, do you have to distribute this as an advocacy tool to deepen understanding and relations between the Arab American communities and Jewish American communities to create peace building? Well, one of the sponsors is Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area. And I haven't met any of them personally that I know of. Maybe some of you are here. But I would love to talk further with them or any other groups that think that this might be useful. But I don't have any specific plans at the moment. How do we access this with, if we don't have a smart phone, the histories? Okay, that's a great question, Nancy. On the electronic Intifada site, they did a nice story and they have links to all the photos and the audio. So if you go to theelectronicintifada.org and search out the title of the show or my name, it should take you right there. So I was involved in Jewish Voice for Peace a while ago. This was back in the run up to the Iraq War. And at the time, I don't know how it is now, but at the time it was a very loose ad hoc organization. And we kind of did the best we could, but at least at the time they just didn't have a whole lot of resources. But there's a lot of good intentions with that group. And my question to you is personally, do you have hope for a viable state of Palestine with respect and social and economic justice for Palestinians? Do you have hope for that vision that we can see that in our lifetime? Are you speaking about like the West Bank and Gaza or the whole country? Well, if Palestinians could have their own country called Palestine, you know, now or in the future, whatever that looks like, you know, a good vision where there's peace and security for Israeli Jews and also social and economic justice for Palestinians, where they control their own land and their own resources. And there's respect from the international community. If you have that vision, do you feel like that is something that could be realized in our lifetime? I'm optimistic that it's going to happen. And it's already on the way there in the sense that there is no occupied territory anymore. The whole country is occupied. It's the whole thing. So it's one country. It's already a binational state. It's just not a democratic or secular state. And I think this is going to happen. I don't think it might happen in our lifetime, but sometimes surprising things just come out of the blue, whether it's somebody like Sadat who just changes the whole equation or who knows what, something might just be in the work somewhere and change it. But going at the pace it's going at now, I don't see it happening in our lifetime.