Issa Touma (photographer and gallerist from Aleppo, Syria) gave a interview on Chaos & Conflict on 12 February 2016, organised by ArtEZ studium generale.
Issa Touma is a photographer, cultural animator and founder of Le Pont gallery originating in the heavily damaged city of Aleppo in Syria, where he still lives on and off. In 2012 he initiated Art Camping, a collaborative program that attempts to counter the violence of the conflict by encouraging young people from various religious and ethnic backgrounds to express themselves through art and culture He received a lot of international attention for the film 9 Days – From my Window (2012), a video diary about the first nine days of war. ‘Women We Have Not Lost Yet and Other Stories from Aleppo’ portrays 15 young women who took refuge in Le Pont gallery during the ‘Great Attack’ by radical Islamists in April 2015. The stories, recorded by Touma on video and in photographs, are a cry for freedom from the women Syria has not yet lost – to death, exile or oppression.
