Yafa

Yafa is not merely a place I photograph — it is a living archive etched in the stones, the waves, and the wrinkles of its fishermen. Through my lens, Yafa emerges not just as an ancient port city, but as a soulful intersection between memory and resilience, beauty and loss. I do not chase postcard sunsets or glossy perfection. I seek the unnoticed — the quiet dignity of a weathered wall, the sway of laundry in the sea breeze, the solitude of an old man gazing at the horizon where empires once docked. My photography captures Yafa as it breathes: layered, textured, and defiantly alive. In the golden hour, Ajami glows like an open wound kissed by light — its homes whispering stories of families uprooted but never erased. The fishermen’s port, humble yet eternal, becomes a metaphor of return. Each net cast into the water seems to retrieve fragments of the past: fragments I attempt to preserve in each frame. I photograph Yafa with a sense of duty, as if documenting a fading manuscript. But I also do so with love — raw, stubborn love — for a city that has given the world oranges and poetry, and to me, the sacred task of remembrance. This is not nostalgia. This is reclamation. This is Yafa, through my lens.