Essam served for three years as a geospatial analyst in the US Army, he then earned a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts and went on to create his most notable artworks, Drone Zones, and The Drone Campaign. These seminal works garnered international press and have been featured in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News with inquisitive responses prompting interrogation of presidential candidates concerning foreign and domestic drone use and led to his arrest by the NYPD Bureau of Counter-Terrorism.

 

Essam is the founder and Executive Director of The Artists Sanctum, a non-profit dedicated to socio-political art and community discourse. When not making art and running a non-profit Essam can often be found on Capitol Hill working as a public policy advocate for veteran and military-related issues.