Public Project
A Syrian Farewell
Copyright Abd Doumany 2024
Updated Sep 2016
Location Syria
Topics Abandonment, Children, Civil Rights, Civil Wars, Crime, Dictatorship, Documentary, Dreams, Dying/Death, Fear, Freedom, Human Rights, Military, Oppression, Photography, Photojournalism, Politics, Sorrow, Spirituality, Violence, war
A Syrian Farewell is an ongoing project which I started working on in 2015 when I was covering the war in Syria. It was then that I was struck by the power and pain of farewell which is far more intense than death or injury. It's a  moment that scars the soul forever yet documenting it seems to get lost between other images of shelling, bombing and death. In my project I started looking for those moments of farewell and for objects that trace it when the person is no longer there. I aim to capture the less seen side of war and that moment which lasts with a person for the rest of his life. It's that specific moment that can take over your thoughts, your mood, and the flow of your day when your mind decides to wander and go back in time, yet it remains the most intimate one in a separation. The project takes place mainly in my hometown of Douma, which is under rebel control and a front-line to fighting with Syrian government forces. My goal is to photograph the least captured moment and humanize the people I'm photographing in order to remind the world of the deeper injury which is beyond the physical one, and to portray a side of war which the mainstream media tends to neglect.
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