Since the mid-1980s, the visual narrative of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has been predictable: photographs of stone-throwing teenagers confronting Israeli soldiers, refugee camps, mothers mourning children killed in conflicts, and long lines at border crossing points. Particularly dramatic variations on these visual tropes make the front pages and win awards.

Tanya Habjouqa, a Jordanian-born photographer, looks for subtler strategies to explore today’s Palestinian experience.

“I really felt like I needed to find another way to tell a story, not only just to make sense of it for myself but to make sense of it for how I’m going to present it to my children as well, since this is going to be their home too,” said Ms. Habjouqa, who lives in East Jerusalem with her husband, a Palestinian lawyer with Israeli citizenship, and their two children.

She focused on pleasure instead of suffering. She focused on humor, too, which she said Palestinians use to face the absurdities of everyday life in the Israeli-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza.

“I am in awe of the Palestinians for not only surviving but actually enjoying their lives in the face of the difficulties of their daily life and their political situation,” said Ms. Habjouqa, who was raised mostly in Texas.

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Not everyone she wanted to photograph understood her approach right away. Some people were adamant about how they should be shown.

“Occasionally people would be offended when I told them what I was doing,” she said. “They would say, ‘We’re suffering and you want to talk about how good things are?’ I always had to explain the project. Especially in Gaza, where there would be this moment of distress and paranoia.”

But after describing the project and asking people how they navigated their situation to find fun or escape, most were willing to be photographed. And pleasures abounded, although they were sometimes bittersweet.

In Ramallah, on the West Bank, Ms. Habjouqa documented economically privileged young people dressing up in tight miniskirts, driving nice cars and socializing in bars. She photographed girls practicing yoga and women racing cars in the West Bank as well as male body builders (Slide 5) and a parkour team in Gaza (Slide 3).

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While driving aimlessly through the West Bank, she came across several strikingly beautiful swimming holes managed by the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority. Some, she said, were dominated by settlers and were quite tense, while in others Jews and Palestinians swam side by side in relative harmony.

Ms. Habjouqa had worked on the series “Women in Gaza” in 2009, exploring, she says, “the real role of women during the time of Hamas.” At the time, she did not feel Hamas was the most dominant force in daily life. But when she returned earlier in 2013, she found that Hamas was exerting greater control over public behavior.

“I was quite shocked — people who even had been politically sympathetic to Hamas were feeling oppressed,” she said. “People across the board, not just women, men and youth.”

Many Gazans spend time at the beaches that in the early years of the peace process were considered potential tourist attractions. Today, they are patrolled by Hamas police attempting to keep couples apart and women dressed modestly. Hamas has, however, built several popular amusement parks.

Because of travel restrictions by Israel few Palestinians can travel between Gaza and the West Bank. Many young Gazans dream of getting a taste of the cosmopolitan life in Ramallah. West Bank Palestinians want to know the details of life in Gaza. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, few signs of its presence remain, but the effects of the economic blockade are evident, Ms. Habjouqa said.

“It is like a double occupation existentially, both within and without,” she said. “Economic and travel restrictions from the Israelis and internal restrictions from Hamas.”

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Ms. Habjouqa is a founding member of Rawiya — a collective of Arab women photographers. Her “Palestinian Pleasures” project was partly funded by a grant from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund.

Other popular destinations for Gazans are the many zoos in Gaza City. Ms. Habjouqa photographed in several of them and said that, despite having lost animals during Israeli offensives, the zoos have found ways to carry on.

“Gazan zookeepers are renowned for creativity when faced with limited options, whether painting donkeys as zebras, smuggling in animals through the tunnels, or stuffing them once they are dead because animals are difficult to replace,” she said.

Upon arriving in Gaza earlier this year, Ms. Habjouqa searched out the zoo with the dyed zebra/donkeys. She heard different stories as she visited each zoo, but at the last one she found the man who created the zebras for his visitors.

But she couldn’t photograph them.

He had fed them to his lions, who were starving and were much more difficult to replace than donkeys.

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