Saturday morning, October 7. The State of Israel is in chaos, moving between uncertainty and helplessness. Ziv Koren, the decorated journalist and documentary photographer, knows only one thing: that he must be there - in the field - now. He takes the camera, gets on the motorcycle and races south. In less than an hour he will be among the first photographers to be exposed to the horrors in the southern settlements, photographing firefights with Hamas terrorists and documenting scenes that will forever be engraved in the national memory. Thus begins a huge, unprecedented documentary project, during which Koren records day by day the events of the massacre and the war that breaks out in its wake.
A project, during which he takes more than a quarter of a million photos - in the Otaf communities surrounded by the war, on the escape routes from the Nova festival, in the IDF assembly areas, in the fighting on the streets of Gaza, in the mobilized home front, in cities that absorb rocket barrages. He commemorates funerals, documents the struggle to return the abducted, documents the wounded In the rehabilitation departments, present everywhere through which it is appropriate to tell the story of fall-winter 2023/4: Israel at war.
About 400 selected photographs from this period are now combined in a new book, which will be published in a large album format, with luxurious specifications and in the scope of about 300 pages. Along with the photos - some of which were published in the Israeli and international press and some of which are revealed here for the first time - the book will include excerpts of text penned by Koren and other writers.
The book is planned to be released in preparation for Memorial Day and later will also be produced in an English edition. "Seven October" is the 22nd book by Ziv Koren, a world-renowned photographer who covered events such as the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, the war in Ukraine and the corona epidemic in Israel. This is a powerful documentary mosaic of one of the greatest events in the history of the State of Israel. This is a photographed diary of a painful and shocking period in which sadness, hope and the majesty of heroism are mixed together.
And above all, it is an extraordinary visual-historical document that narrates a new chapter in the country's history; that manages to illustrate in pictures the magnitude of the moment, the depth of the break and the Israeli spirit - a moving documentation that will remain behind us for future generations. The distribution and sale of the book "Seventh in October" by the photographer Ziv Koren, will be done by the Story network which, since that Saturday 10/7/23, has been creating and promoting various social activities, all profits from which it donates to advocacy organizations as well as to the rehabilitation of settlements and residents of the south.
The Story chain was the first to create a collaboration of young fashion designers from the south who were at home that Saturday, called Border Story, and together they launched a line of t-shirts that were sold in stores and on the Story website. From the project which was very successful, a large amount of money was collected which was transferred to the various advocacy organizations with the thought of the need to continue telling the stories of the place and the stories of the people who went through the atrocities on that Sabbath and to spread them all over the world.
The price of the book "Seven in October": NIS 220 and it will be sold in Story stores in Basel, Shinkin, Dizingoff Square, Ramat Aviv, Haifa, Yehud, Sharonim, Ayalon, TLV, BS and on the website.
The profits from the sale of the book online will be donated to advocacy organizations in order to continue to voice the voices and stories of the people behind the images.