A soldier once sent Michael Christopher Brown a direct message after finding his own photograph on the photographer’s Instagram. The soldier asked a question that would become the title of Brown’s forthcoming book: “What is the difference between bullets and stones?”

Brown understood what the soldier meant. But the longer he sat with that sentence, the more he realised what it was. “A gun, like a stone, is a force multiplier. It controls the distance, it controls the time," Brown told the audience at Xposure International Photography Festival (2026) during his talk about his book The Difference Between Bullets and Stones. “And in Palestine, one side overwhelmingly has this control. So bullets and stones became metaphors. Bullets enable distance. Stones require closeness. Bullets act instantly. Stones accumulate meaning over time. This work lives inside that difference.”

The project, a collaboration with 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, pairs Abu Toha’s poetry with the photojournalist’s work from the West Bank and Jerusalem to create what Brown describes as work “with Palestine,” not merely “about Palestine,” a distinction that matters.

Brown, a National Geographic contributor since 2004 and former Magnum Photos associate, gained international recognition for pioneering smartphone photography in conflict zones - most notably with his acclaimed book Libyan Sugar (2016), which documented the 2011 Libyan Revolution entirely on iPhone.

That project won several awards, but it also nearly killed him. In April 2011, Brown was hit by mortar fire in Misrata, losing nearly half his blood and requiring two transfusions. The same attack led to the death of his friends, renowned war photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros.

His Palestine work is an acknowledgment that photography alone cannot carry certain stories. “Early on, I knew these photographs could not stand alone,” Brown said. “I did not want this work to be about Palestine. I wanted it to be with Palestine.”

Mosab Abu Toha, the Gaza-born poet whose 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary-recognised essays in The New Yorker combined “deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience.”

“I reached out and contacted Mosab so his poetry would not illustrate the images, but stand alongside them,” Brown explained.

He repeatedly emphasised the importance of joy in conflict photography, something viewers would not associate with the genre. “Joy matters in this work. In conflict, if I only photograph suffering, I flatten people into symbols that are easy to consume. Joy complicates things, and it refuses a single story,” Brown noted, showing images of Palestinians celebrating the release of a prisoner in Bethlehem.

Another image captured a child in Hebron placing hands on a stone wall outside school, while Abu Toha’s poetry spoke: "I am neither in nor out. I'm in between. I'm not part of anything. I'm a shadow of something that does not really exist. I am weightless, a speck of time in Gaza."

In October 2025, Brown and Abu Toha funded the book through Kickstarter, committing to donate all profits after production costs to Doctors Without Borders' Gaza efforts and the Middle East Children's Alliance.

Backers could choose rewards that included mailing a copy to US government officials - senators, representatives, State Department officials - selected from a curated list of policymakers shaping foreign policy, humanitarian aid, and awareness in the Levant.

The campaign structure itself became a form of advocacy, turning readers into active participants in the work's circulation and impact.

At the end of his talk, Brown returned to the soldier’s original question about bullets and stones. “This work doesn’t try to resolve anything," he said. "It doesn't ask you to have a position. It asks you to notice what accumulates - gestures, memory, and presence. And to notice what remains after decades of war, and what survives, not because it is powerful, but because it is human.”