Bear Witness: Photojournalist Tamir Kalifa performs live at Safelight Labs

Feb 20

There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in — Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)

Renowned photojournalist and multi-instrumentalist Tamir Kalifa treated a select few at Safelight Labs’ Studio on February 15 to a live rendition of his heart-rending opus, Witness (released January 23rd), comprised of nine ballads pulled straight from reporting on the frontlines of the gravest atrocities and natural disasters of our time. The profoundly cathartic performance condenses a six-year (2018 - 2024) period of his career as a visual storyteller for legendary press institutions — such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and others— into an anthology of melody that hums with quiet anguish and gentle perseverance.

Last Sunday, every track, covering monumental tragedies like the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022 and the beginning days of the Israel - Hamas war in 2023, was accompanied by corresponding photographs projected onto the rear studio wall that served as evidence to humanity’s resilience in the face of extreme adversity and unthinkable grief.

“When it works, a photograph distills the great issues of our time into a universal moment that invites viewers to recognize part of themselves in the life of another, opening the door to deeper empathy, if not action”, Tamir said.

Inevitability, within a compact 280-square-foot studio, its bare walls heightened a sense of shared, inescapable vulnerability transmitted through the strum of his guitar and the delicate pluck of his oud. The inclusion of the oud — a Middle Eastern string instrument that predates the medieval lute — was no accident. Tamir’s grandfather was a Moroccan luthier, a craftsman devoted to building and repairing ouds. As a Jew with roots in the Muslim world, Tamir carries a lineage shaped by migration and rupture. In that lineage echoes the generational trauma and displacement that continue to bind Palestinians and Israelis in a history neither can fully escape.

In describing the album, Tamir muses “These shared experiences have shown me that we have far more in common than what divides us, and that despite having so many reasons to lose hope, people still, as Springsteen sang, find a reason to believe.”

Despite the rampant polarization and politics of demonization ravaging this country, Witness —and its multimedia live show — cuts through the sensationalism and muffles the dog whistles by platforming the humanity often obscured by rapidly cycled headlines. As someone who has documented some of the darkest days in our history, Tamir Kalifa still gives people a reason to believe, locating the cracks of light found in the hope and empathy borne out of tragedy.