AlJundi

Rasha Al Jundi is a Palestinian visual storyteller and documentary photographer. Born in Amman, Jordan in 1984, she grew up in the UAE, after which she pursued Masters degree in Community Nutrition from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. During her seven year stay in Lebanon, she volunteered with the Lebanese Red Cross and worked with academic research organizations and a local NGO in coordinating rural development and environmental programs around Lebanon.

In 2009, Rasha traveled to Yemen to work with CARE International to support civil society organizational development. She then joined the German Agency for Development as a regional program officer for projects in Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan. In 2012, she moved to South Sudan to assist with an emergency nutrition program, then to Egypt to manage humanitarian counter-trafficking projects for the International Organization of Migration. In 2014, she joined Save the Children as a deputy humanitarian coordinator.

In 2016, she became a head of mission and director of humanitarian program in Nigeria. In 2018, she produced a photo series for the IRC in Nigeria called The Road to Bama, which is about the forced returns of displaced people to Bama town. At the end of that year, she produced La Hembra that focused on Idamyles, a female Cuban boxer. In 2019, she began In the Name of, a project documenting communal practices in the name of religious and cultural beliefs. In 2020, she produced A State of Mind, a photographic series about depression, combining images with verses by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Later that year, Rasha joined FilmAid Kenya, as their field manager in Kakuma refugee camp.

During her time in Kakuma, she utilized her position and access to the refugee and host Turkana community to produce two photographic stories for FilmAid’s quarterly refugee magazines, titled Blood, Sweat and Livelihoods, a story on refugee and local workers at the Kakuma slaughterhouse; and Seeing Beyond the Obvious, a reflection on FilmAid Kenya’s media training students’ productions. In 2021, she became an associate with Photographers Without Border and completed a two-week assignment to support a grassroots organization in an urban slum around Nairobi. The story covered success stories the organizations programs to enhance their fundraising campaigns.

In 2022, Rasha completed the one year Documentary Photography and Visual Photojournalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Awards/Grants:

- 2022: Tom Stoddart Inaugural Award Winner by the Ian Parry Scholarship for Red Soil.

- 2022: Second place International Photography Award for Red Soil under the category "People, Cultures & Traditions".

- 2022: Photographers Without Borders (PWB) micro-grant winner for Red Soil. 

Group Exhibitions :

- 2022: One image from Red Soil selected for The Best of Show by the International Photography Awards (New York, USA).

- 2022 - Fragile Constellations final student virtual exhibition by the International Center of Photography.

- 2021 - Reimagine virtual photography exhibition by Scotiabank and Photographers Without Borders featured a single image submission from the project In the Name Of...

- 2021 - Reframe virtual photography exhibition curated by Photographers Without Borders for the organization's twelfth anniversary.

- 2019 -Beirut Image Festival (first edition) featured La Hembra project, under the title Fulfilling a Dream (Beirut, Lebanon). 

Published stories :

- Maasai in Kenia Von ihrem Land vertrieben, als Attraktion missbraucht: Wie Touristen die Unterdrückung der Maasai unterstützen, Stern magazine — Germany (December 2022)

- "Diani's Changing Waters", The Elephant online magazine, Kenya (January 2022)

- "Discovering the Light Within", Photographers Without Borders Magazine, Canada (December 2021)

- "Blood, sweat and livelihoods", The Refugee Magazine, FilmAid, Kakuma - Kenya (August 2021)