During the run of Light From the Middle East, the much-heralded photography show at London’s V&A last year, the Syrian photographer Issa Touma was asked if he thought of his work as political. His answer was telling. “Everything in the Middle East can be political if you have censorship,” he said of his homeland and the harassment he has faced from the Assad regime. “They do not like the freedom I have, but they also do not have much choice. I exist in some way.”

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