Ones to Watch 2025 – Maen Hammad

In 2020, when Hammad was residing in Palestine, Sheikh Jarrah was the centre of a burgeoning rebellion, and his work rapidly become one thing else. As protests erupted, his lens shifted towards the resistance, a second that pressured him to rethink his photos of skaters. The result’s Landing, a photobook that challenges typical expectations; the debut publication of Huwawa Books, led by Roï Saade and Tamara Abdul Hadi, it’s intentionally disorienting. Pages should be rotated, photos demand nearer scrutiny.

Skateboarding, for Hammad, has at all times been deeply private. In the US, it was an escape from the constraints of suburban life, from the alienation of being a Palestinian American post-9/11. In the West Bank, it’s a solution to reclaim house, to construct group, to carve out pleasure in an occupied land. “Having found the skating community here in the West Bank when I moved back, it was also a very important escape for my own nurturing back home. And it’s a small community here.”

But Hammad’s work extends past the skate parks. His images has taken him to prisoner launch gatherings, the place 1000’s of Palestinians assemble to witness the return of those that have spent many years behind bars. “I told myself, ‘I’m going to go to every one of the releases’, because if I wasn’t a photographer, I would still be going there to see it as this point of assembly,” he says. “And as a photographer, I feel like I have an obligation to document this for our people. And for my future self, to be showing my kids or my ancestors, ‘Yeah, I was there, and these are the photos of hundreds of prisoners being released from colonial bars’.”

The unpredictability of documenting prisoner releases – ready for hours with no assure of when or how they are going to occur – has solely deepened his connection to his topics, and Hammad feels a accountability in the direction of them, and to recording the second of their homecoming. It is a part of his difficult relationship with the digicam, an instrument of documentation and energy, of each violence and care.

“I am a firm believer that the camera is one of the most violent things probably produced on this planet,” he says. “And I say this as somebody who’s immensely frustrated with the world of photography on Palestine. That’s another indicator of why I feel like there’s this responsibility, at least to offset some of the damage that’s been done.”