Greetings from Aleppo

Since 2014, photographer Issa Touma has returned to his hometown Aleppo, Syria on a regular basis. For more than two years, he has captured everyday encounters with fellow residents of a city torn apart by war.

He has helped to clear an unexploded bomb from his parents’ apartment and visited artist friends whose works he is collecting for an upcoming exhibition in Singapore. Getting to Aleppo is harder every visit: he initially travelled by bus from Beirut, Lebanon. The buses were forced to make numerous detours through the desert to avoid the front lines. When the buses stopped running because of sniper fire, he travelled by car, usually in a convoy.

Greetings from Aleppo is an homage to the resilience of the people who try – sometimes to an absurd degree – to continue living the lives they led before the war. From car lovers who drive their gleaming classic cars through the devastated streets, to the girls who giggle about the way the media reports on the situation in their city.