Victoria and Albert Museum Collection :

( V&A )Photography Collection of Issa Touma Syrian Photographer will be open Under the Name : Light from the Middle East: New Photography’, which will be open to public at the V&A from 13 November 2012 to 7 April 2013.

11photographs of a Sufi festival by Issa Touma, have been added to the ArtFund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum .

For the last ten years ISSA TOUMA ,he has photographed the Sufi procession of the Rifa’i brotherhood, ‘the day of al-Ziyara’, made in honor of the Sufi teacher Al-Sheikh Abou Bakr Al-Huwari.

Sufism is a mystical order of Islam. Pilgrims visit the shrine of the Holy Marabout, bearing money and other gifts, and indulge in music, dance, song and mystical rituals where many are said to experience religious ecstasy. The culmination of the procession is the spectacle of the mortification of the flesh; a self inflicted wounding which is seen as an extreme act of faith. While this Sufi meeting is on the margins of mainstream Islamic religious traditions, it is nevertheless remains popular…..

first Syrian photographers at V&A Collection. so this significant piece would go towards redressing the international balance and remit of the collection. Touma’s photographs are significant in their documentary as well as their compositional and artistic qualities. They provide a rare glimpse of a religious ceremony that will be unfamiliar to many in the UK.Touma’s works not only presents a view of a contemporary Middle Eastern patriarchal society from a male perspective, but its photographic style would also provide a visual counter-balance to the more conceptual and color works

LINK TO MUSEUM :

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?listing_type&offset=0&limit=15&narrow&extrasearch&q=issa+Touma+&commit=Search&quality=0&objectnamesearch&placesearch&after&after-adbc=AD&before&before-adbc=AD&namesearch&materialsearch&mnsearch&locationsearch

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1223713/photograph-untitled-sufis-the-day-of/

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1223695/photograph-untitled-sufis-the-day-of/

Arabic Link

http://www.alraddar.com/ar-sy/NewsView/87/4740/أول_سوري_في_متحف_فكتوريا_و_ألبيرت_في_لندن.aspx#.Tse7twww.alraddar.com

About Issa Touma (born Safita, Syria, lives and works in Aleppo

Issa Touma is a prominent figure in the Syrian art scene. Self-taught, he began

his career as a photographer in the early 1990s. Finding himself isolated from

the international art world and photography scene, he established Black and

White, a gallery dedicated to photography, in Aleppo in 1992. After its closure, in

1996 he founded Le Pont Organisation and Gallery, an independent art

organisation to promote freedom of expression and stimulate the local art

scene through international events.

In 1996 Touma was art director of the first European-Arab jazz festival in

Aleppo, and in 1997 Le Pont hosted the first International Photography

Gathering, Aleppo, one of the first international contemporary photography

events in the Middle East. Le Pont has also organised the International

Women’s Art Festival in Aleppo since 1999.

Le Pont Gallery shows exhibitions of photography from Syrian and international

artists and functions as an open cultural space, running photography classes

and workshops. In Spring 2012, it initiated the Art Camping workshops, which

attempt to counter the violence of the insurgency with artistic interventions

around Aleppo.

Touma’s own photographs reflect social and political life in Syria, with a focus

on the city of Aleppo. His project Sufi: the Day of al-Ziyara (1995-2005) has been

shown in many exhibitions and festivals internationally, including: Nazar ,

Noorderlicht Photography Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands (2004); and

ECTASY Pilgrimages in Christianity and Islam, Museumpark Orientalis, Heilig

Landstichting, The Netherlands (2008). Dancing for the Big Father an ongoing

series about the omnipresence of photographs of the Syrian President was

shown as part of Exile, Art Center, Silkebord Bad, Denmark (2009) and 2nd

International Antakya Bienali, Turkey (2010). In 2006 Touma served as artistic

consultant for the exhibition Images of Syria, at Moestings Hus, Copenhagen,

which included photographs from his series Aleppo from Above 2006 , and More …