Osama Esid, Waleed, 2014

Osama Esid is a portrait photographer whose images express the power of human connections and employ early photography techniques. After traveling to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, he created a body of work in which each subject is portrayed with compassion, sensitivity and Esid’s unique understanding of the communities he is a part of. Many children in the camps immediately gravitated to him, inspiring a series of portraits that emulate school photos. Avoiding tropes of photojournalism, Esid creates a human landscape in his images that tells a story of displacement and hardship, as well as the tenderness of a hopeful future generation.

Esid studied photography at the Technical Institute of Damascus and left Syria for Paris in 1994. He later moved to the United States and currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a fellow of the McKnight foundation from Franklin Artworks in Minneapolis and his work has been exhibited in Africa, North America, Europe and the Middle East. His most recent series, Solomon’s Tent, is a public exhibition by Northern Sparks in Minneapolis and Hafez Gallery in Saudi Arabia.

Courtesy of the artist