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| Syrian photojournalist Mouneb Taim, 20, poses with a camera in this undated photo. He is currently in Turkey, seeking asylum there. Courtesy of Mouneb Taim |
A self-taught Syrian photographer chronicles children suffering the consequences of armed conflicts, asking people outside Syria to help end the war
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Mouneb Taim used to be an ordinary carefree, open-minded Syrian kid who was curious about the world outside his country and eager to get to know more about other countries ― like Korea ― as well as to interact with people of different cultures.
He would have followed his heart, if Syria had not been thrown into turmoil following the civil war there, which has displaced about half of the country's pre-war population.
The war began in March 2011 in the form of popular protests against the repressive leader, Bashar al-Assad, but later turned into a full-scale war involving foreign forces and Islamic jihadists, following the government's brutal crackdown on the protestors.
According to the Britain-based monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nearly 390,000 people had died, and 200,000 had gone missing by December 2020, with 120,000 of them being civilians. More than half of Syria's prewar population of 22 million have fled their homes.
The Syrian war has changed the course of his life dramatically. Instead of going to medical school to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a dentist, Taim has captured the war-torn country in photography in order to educate the international community about the suffering of Syrians and to rally their support to end the war.
Like other Syrians, Taim, now 20, has lived in daily terror of bombings and airstrikes, as the war has continued for 10 years.
But in fact, he has suffered in other ways as well. As a sexual minority and cause-driven independent photojournalist, he has learned that his existence itself has made him vulnerable to persecution.
"I am gay. I love colors and life and doing things like having my hair long and blonde," he said in an email interview with The Korea Times. He answered in Arabic which was translated into English by a translator before it was sent to this reporter.
"I was banned from everything by the hardline Islamic faction that seized the city of Ghouta where I lived. I was persecuted just because I am gay," he said.
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| A baby covered with blood and dirt is being taken to a hospital in Syria in this undated photo. This photo is part of Mouneb Taim's award-winning photo series, titled, "War Notes," submitted to the organizers of Unpublished Photo Competition 2021. Taim is one of the joint top prize winners. Courtesy of Mouneb Taim |
Taim said that he was forced to be silent about his sexual orientation.
The Islamic faction perpetrated hate toward him as a sexual minority by putting up a sign in front of his house in Ghouta in order to humiliate him openly and make him seen like a sinner. It read, "Religion should be spread despite such insects."
He didn't provide further details about what the phrase meant, but considering the context, it seems to mean that queer people like him are an obstacle to spreading Islam to the public, but despite such hurdles, believers need to keep spreading the teachings of the religion.
Growing up in a conservative family in the religious city of Ghouta, near Damascus, he was an odd man out as a queer person.
Persecution of sexual minorities has intensified after the fundamental Islamic groups joined the Syrian war and captured his city.
He didn't violate any laws or hurt others. But he was arrested twice, first by the Syrian army forces in 2016, when he was filming Damascus for his project, "Damascus, the Land of Jasmin," and then the next year, by the Islamic rebel group that took over Syria's southwestern city of Ghouta, while taking photos of the protestors against the rebels.
The second arrest was particularly traumatic. Taim was brutally tortured by the Islamic group and then put in solitary confinement. His suffering occurred just because he was (and still is) gay.
Then the Islamic jihadist group, Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, threatened him that they would force him to leave the city.
But the continued persecution didn't stop him from covering the massacres there until recently, when he left Syria for Turkey to seek asylum.
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| Children watch a puppeteer as he performs in the rubble, in bombed area of an unnamed Syrian city in this photo taken by Mounbe Taim. The Syrian photographer has captured images of children in the war-torn country since he was 14. Courtesy of Mouneb Taim |
Taim became a self-taught photographer after his brother was killed in the wake of militant Islamic groups having taken control of Eastern Ghouta. He took his brother's camera and has since chronicled war-torn Syria and people living in the terror of war.
He has no official training to be a photographer. Several winning works at international photography competitions that were available on the internet have taught him about composition and how to take photos.
Being aware of the power of photography as an effective medium to tell people outside his country about the suffering of Syrians, he has risked his life to capture images of the war. He soon became a common enemy of both the Syrian army and the militant Islamic groups. They banned his work, but that couldn't stop him from fulfilling his mission to reveal the catastrophic consequences of the war.
As a photographer, he has featured children whose lives were torn apart during the war. They were too young to understand what was happening in their country.
Children whose faces were covered with dirt after bombing attacks and airstrikes, those wounded with bandages and those critically injured, as well as those playing in the rubble, have all been captured in his photos.
Through those innocent children suffering from the consequences of the war, Taim saw himself: a young boy who was not accepted by other members of his society and still reeling from brutal torture and forced segregation.
Being gay in the war-torn Islamic country severed his ties with his family members. He was left alone, as his conservative family members cut him off, after he was arrested and tortured by the Islamic group.
Like the children he was capturing via his lens, he was a teen crying out for help, but there was nobody to answer his cries.
He was saddened when he worked on the photo project about child soldiers who were conscripted by the Islamic militant groups in Ghouta and forced to undergo military training in the name of religious education. "The youngest was a seven-year-old boy. The weapon he carried was longer than his entire body," he said.
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| Taim walking with his camera in an unspecified bombed city in Syria. Courtesy of Mouneb Taim |
Without knowing what they were doing, those children were brainwashed and radicalized by the Islamic group to join the armed conflict.
Taim's works have been recognized recently.
He submitted a series of his works, under the title of, "War Notes," to the organizers of this year's Unpublished Photo 2021 (UP 21) competition, for young photographers under the age of 36, which was promoted by Museo delle Culture Lugano (MUSEC) and the Lugano Culture and Museum Foundation, in collaboration with the 29 Arts in Progress Gallery of Milan.
Taim was named the joint winner of the top prize, along with Vietnamese photographer, Khanh Bui Phu, who presented photos of nomadic lifestyles.
UP 21 organizers said that his works are an impressive document of daily life during the civil war in Syria.
"It is an impressive document of daily life during the recent war that has bloodied Syria. The project is charged with a lyrical message and the young photographer expresses feeling part of a wounded culture. His photos have a profound note of hope that eventually prevails amidst the destruction," they said in a press release announcing the winners of this year's competition for the unpublished photos.
His and three others' winning works will be exhibited at MUSEC in Switzerland from Sept. 23 to Feb. 21 of next year.
