Elsie Slonim is a Jewish who was born in America during the I. World War. In 1939, she has met her husband in America who was, at that time, a businessman located in Cyprus and they moved together to Cyprus. As a Jewish, she has deeply experienced the pain of the II. World War as she has lost all her relatives except for her immediate family members, her father, mother and sister, in the Holocaust. During the II. World War, they have been sent to Israel, Palestinian at that time, as refugees by the British Government in Cyprus. However, they returned back to Cyprus after the war. She lost her husband and her two children between 2005 and 2011. Now, she is 98 years old and she is the only civilian living in the military Buffer Zone, which separates two communities in Cyprus, created after the war in 1974. She can only be visited with special permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After her first book ‘Lemons from Paradise’ published in 2012, which was about her life in between America, Austria, Cyprus and Israel, she is now working on her second book that will also cover her memories about the Auschwitz.
I was born in Cyprus and studied Engineering Sciences and MBA. I took courses on Photography in Central Saint Martins College and graduated from ‘Photography and Camera Operation’ in Anadolu University. I have been chosen ‘The Best Performing Photographer of the Year’ in 2014 in Cyprus. I had my first duo exhibition ‘Exotic Morocco’ in 2014. I was invited to Berlin Fine Art and Documentary Biennial in 2016, for a solo exhibition in Paphos in Cyprus, a group and a solo exhibition in Austria and a solo exhibition in Uppsala, Sweden in 2017.
