The image as a document of Syrian daily life

As part of the Reflections on the Image evening for the month of March, the Bina Cultural Salon in the Nation Building Movement hosted photographer Hisham Zaouit in an evening entitled The Image as a Document of Daily Syrian Life.
It revolved around the experience of photographer "Zouait" in street photography and documenting Syrian life through the citizenship project that the photographer worked on in 2003 in partnership with the late Dr. Hassan Abbas, Dr. Hanan Qassab Hassan, and lawyer Daad Musa. It was completed in the form of a book entitled "I, You, They", which presented the concepts of citizenship and human rights through a group of photos taken from the reality of Syrian life, in addition to selected literary and intellectual texts from the Arab cultural heritage that highlight the authenticity of these concepts and their roots in our culture.

The evening began with a moment of silence in memory of the late project supervisor, Dr. Hassan Abbas, followed by a presentation of a collection of images and texts included in the book, which were chosen based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified in 1948, and divided work into 17 rights, starting with the right to live in a clean environment and ending with the right to work under humane conditions.

The photos created a large space for dialogue and contemplation with the evening’s audience about the concepts they carried and the extent of their connection to the details of daily life and their expression of the reality of the Syrian people, without forgetting the comparisons between the past in which the photos were taken and our reality today.