“Portraits of Journalists Killed in Palestine – An Exhibition by Gianluca Costantini”
June 19, 20, 21, and 22
8:00 PM – Sirena Auditorium, Foyer
Festival of Narratives, Francavilla al Mare
Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent brutal retaliation, Gianluca Costantini has been drawing portraits of journalists killed in the Gaza Strip. Working closely with the CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, he has built a visual memorial day by day.
Costantini’s visual project — by an internationally renowned artist and political activist known for tirelessly giving a face and an iconic presence to victims of abuse — does not aim to restore what has been taken away, as that is impossible. Rather, it is an offering, a gesture of care for the memory of those who are no longer here and who had chosen, as their mission on this earth, to bear witness.
The portraits have already been used in protest actions in Atlanta, New York, Berlin, Seattle, and Naples, as often happens with the artist’s projects. The drawings become tools for communication, placed in the hands of citizens who carry them with their own bodies into spaces far apart, demanding truth and justice, demanding answers, and in this case, calling for a ceasefire.
The act of drawing the faces of those behind the camera — carefully searching for a photo to use as a reference (which is no easy task, as journalists and media workers are not driven by narcissism but by their attention to others) — is an ultimate form of gratitude, a collective ritual of atonement, and a stubborn desire not to let go of the face of someone dear to us, even if we never met them, even if we never will.
This is a work in progress that closely follows the cartography of the massacre documented by the CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists, cites its sources, and stands as an explicit political warning that cannot be ignored.
The systematic killing of those who wield a camera instead of a gun has reached an unprecedented peak in the ongoing conflict, amounting to a sort of systematic extermination of the media in the Palestinian territories, especially in the Gaza Strip. As of March 13, 2025, at least 171 journalists in the broadest sense have been killed in the war that broke out in October 2023, according to the CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists: of these, 163 were Palestinian, 2 Israeli, and 6 Lebanese.
● 59 journalists have been injured
● 2 journalists are currently missing
● 75 journalists have been arrested
There have also been reports of assaults, threats, online attacks, censorship, and the killing of family members as an intimidation tactic.
How could this happen? And how can we even hope to know, after the fact, what really happened during these months of bloodshed if journalists are physically eliminated, without this being recognized as something that fundamentally undermines the very possibility of truth?
