Facing the Sea

Facing the Sea is a personal and social artistic project, photographed and filmed over the course of 2025 - the result of a collaboration between the non-profit organization HaGal Sheli (My Wave) and artist-photographer Daniel Tchetchik. The organization operates as a unique social, educational and therapeutic framework that transforms the experience of surfing into a space for community building, rehabilitation, and empowerment. For at-risk populations, individuals coping with trauma, and people with special needs, surfing becomes a tool for self-discovery and a means of coping, fostering emotional resilience, connection to inner resources, and a sense of wholeness.

The focal point of this project are HaGal Sheli's participants in the surf therapy program Tools from the Waves - aiming to support children, adolescents, women, and men who have endured the events of October 7 and the ensuing war. The program include evacuees from the Gaza Envelope, soldiers, families who have lost loved ones, families of hostages, and survivors of the Nova and Midburn festivals. Each person photographed carries a personal story of trauma and resilience.

For over a decade, Tchetchik has explored the sea and its surrounding landscapes as a lens through which to examine the fragility, complexity, and strength of human existence. In this project, he studies the reciprocal relationship between the emotional climate and the external environment, combining intimate portraits with expansive landscape photography. Tchetchik’s works, together with video interviews filmed and edited by Oren Yisrael, document the participants’ journey of rehabilitation and renewal: the infinite horizon, moments that take one’s breath away, and encounters with waves that demand movement and presence. The very choice to enter the sea, to face it, and to be moved by its power restores a sense of control, connection, and safety. The body’s presence enables contact with the wound and the possibility of renewal as trauma and loss meet light and hope.