The Power of the (Poor) Image

The “poor image” is defined as a compressed, low-quality, copied image that lacks sufficient data to meet contemporary standards of what an image should be.

The poor image is an image of survival and transit, an image that rapidly circulates among people. It is cropped, downloaded, sent, and reshared until it sometimes loses the source. But the power of the image today lies not in its visual clarity but in its ability to carry a trace of history, even if the image is shaky or blurry.

In the context of war, the poor image is often the clearest.

A few hours after news broke of the martyrdom of reporters Ali Shoeib and Fatima Ftouni, along with cameraman Hussein Ftouni, we stood on the city’s shore. The crew of Al Manar was broadcasting live from Sour.

When he finished, the reporter signed off the broadcast with, “Here is Ali Shoeib, southern Lebanon.” As soon as the camera cut — and as  cameraman Khodr Markiz was crying over his friend and colleague Hajj Ali Shoeib — a faint light flashed in the distant horizon, toward al-Bayyada. The light itself was strong, but because of the fog, we couldn’t tell where it came from or how it burned elsewhere. Fortunately, my camera was still rolling, recording the scene with a 100–400 mm lens.

I didn’t realize at the time that the light had flashed twice; it was only when I played the footage back on my iPad, later in the evening, that I discovered it. That was the first time in my life that my camera and I stood in the dead center of a battle. I felt at that moment as though Hajj Ali was standing right over the lens, guiding it with his hand and pressing the shutter release button.

That moment captured on camera was the moment when a fighter targeted a tank at close range using a hand-held, direct-fire weapon. The euphoria came when Hezbollah’s military media platform replayed the scene, confirming the moment and documenting the operation from all four angles — including the angle Ali Shoeib was filming from my position.

On the thirtieth day of the war on Lebanon, March 30, 2026, Zionist enemy forces were still advancing toward the village of al-Bayyada. They advanced along the Alexandretta Brigade’s mountain route, which leads from the heights of Naqoura in the Hamoul area, using the west of Tayr Harfa as a robust defense arc to secure control of this critical, high vantage point.

The enemy’s control of al-Bayyada would settle the battle in Sour. The enemy could then entrench its military position against the resistance by firing artillery shells at soft targets, without needing to deploy aircraft to subdue the region militarily. The first attempts to enter the village of Shama‘ were visible from Sour. With flares lighting up the sky above the Alexandretta Brigade route and the sound of sweeping operations echoing through that area, it became clear that something suspicious was unfolding in the distance. The sound of artillery did not subside, and we still don’t know if that was live combat or a ground advance.

In the first moments, we saw with our own eyes the direct-trajectory air defense missiles that the resistance launched, just before sunset, in pursuit of warplanes and helicopters. Aircraft were continuously deploying flares to evade our air defenses and, at one point, an F-16 was seen flying further south with its tail engulfed in flames.

Three tanks.

I was still at home when I heard news of the first tank. I wasted no time; I packed my gear and rushed to the press room, where cameras had crowded, each trying to capture the golden shot of the burning tank. Camera at the ready, the lens strained to capture the speck of light in the distance.

We couldn’t see it with the naked eye…

Earlier that day, Mazraat Byout el-Seyyed was visible under Irmis Hill. I had been trying to snap a few photos for some friends from that village. But in the pitch darkness, and so late at night, the fire was completely invisible, unless you widened the aperture and slowed the shutter speed. Just as I was about to take the shot, an explosion flashed in the center of the frame. Allahu akbar. I shouted to everyone around me: “Look at it burn!”

The only image that matters now is the tank ablaze and the resistance fighter’s missile lighting our way through the darkness.