1979-

Omar Imam is an Amsterdam-based, Syrian photographer and Rijksakademie artist. In his photographic works, Imam uses irony and a conceptual approach to respond to the violent situation in Syria. After leaving Damascus in late 2012, he began making fictional short films and he often has to publish his work under a pseudonym. Imam’s photographs vacillate between mundane documents and utterly inconceivable dreams. 

2017, Omar won "Tim Hetherington" Visionary Award 2017 for his ongoing project 'Syrialism'. 2018, Omar has joined Rijksakademie as a resident artist.

In “Live, Love, Refugee” Omar dissolves the recurrent representation  of Syrian refugees by replacing numbers, reports, and statistics with hallucinations, fears, and dreams. He asks them to recreate their dreams: dreams of escape, dreams of emasculation, and dreams of love and terror.  Sparse and surrealistic, the resulting images evoke the deepest and darkest inner worlds of those persisting everyday with their roots stretching further from a home left behind.