No. 5 (2025)
Essays

Clothing Without Bodies: Watching care and connection in images from Gaza

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  • Cherine Fahd,
  • Todd Robinson
Cherine Fahd
University of Technology Sydney
Todd Robinson
University of Technology Sydney
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3604

Published 30-06-2025

Keywords

  • social media,
  • embodiment,
  • fashion studies,
  • political affect,
  • image ethics

How to Cite

Fahd, C., & Robinson, T. (2025). Clothing Without Bodies: Watching care and connection in images from Gaza. Fashion Highlight, (5), 16–25. https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3604

Copyright (c) 2025 Cherine Fahd, Todd Robinson

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article responds to two images from Gaza: a child’s bloodied pink jacket, laid out and empty, and a field of scattered clothes left behind after a strip-search. The people are gone, but the clothes remain powerfully embodied. These are not fashion images, yet they prompt us to see clothing not just as a surface but as something that carries the weight, warmth and presence of a body that is no longer there. We live in a time of relentless exposure to horrific acts documented in images, but these two images affect us differently. They display no bodies, no wounds, only clothing left behind. In a media landscape flooded with graphic violence, it is the clothing without bodies that resonates with us. Their ambiguity makes them difficult to dismiss. In a political climate of denial and deflection, where we’re told nothing is happening, the clothes in these pictures insist that something has. Clothing isn’t simply surface, style, or memorial. In these images, clothes become a political site that bears the trace of the body, speaking to what has been done, and demands to be seen, even when the body is gone.  

 

Pdf

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