Syria—and its nearly decade-long civil war—has been the subject of countless news stories and foreign policy debates. Syrians fleeing violence from war and the Islamic State weigh heavily in the international conversation about refugees and migration.
In 2003, Shaftsbury photographer Kevin Bubriski started documenting what would become some of the final images of pre-war Syria. His stark black-and-white pictures of the architecture, places and people of Syria are collected in a new book called Legacy In Stone: Syria Before War.
Bubriski and Amr Al-Azm, a professor of Middle East History and Anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio who wrote the introduction to the book, spoke with Vermont Edition about traveling in Syria before the March 2011 civil war engulfed the country in chaos.
The pair explain what's happened to the places Bubriski photographed more than 15 years ago, and discuss Al-Azm's work preserving Syria's cultural history through the The Day After Project and it's Heritage Protection Initiative.
Broadcast on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
