Inside War Ravaged Syria
Italian photographer Lorenzo Meloni documented the wrath of war in Homs, Aleppo and Palmyra
A family living in one room in a former university building, converted into housing for IDPs from surrounding districts, in Aleppo, Syria, March 2016.
Andrew Katz
10:36 AM ET
The killing fields in Syria spread quickly. Blood has spilled from streets to neighborhoods, urban centers out to the countryside, and eventually to ancient ruins. No corner of the country has been spared. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions have fled internally, crossed into neighboring countries or Europe, exacerbating a global refugee crisis. A cease-fire between the government and opposition factions hangs in the balance six months after Russia officially entered this intractable fray to support President Bashar Assad.
Magnum photographer Lorenzo Meloni, who for years has documented the grind of war and its toll on civilians, fighters and their surroundings, recently returned from a weeklong trip inside Syria. Based in Paris but often in Beirut, he obtained a visa and, after arriving to Damascus on March 26, soon ventured out to three major cities — Aleppo, Homs and Palmyra.
In Aleppo, he observed the mourning of a government soldier who died fighting ISIS, and photographed internally displaced men, women and children living in a former university building that was converted into a refugee center by a Syrian aid group. He stood in the city’s famous souk, one of six UNESCO World Heritage Sites around Syria that have all been damaged—not solely by jihadists. In one surreal scene, he watched the protestant vicar’s wife use a selfie stick to take photos of the congregation gathered outside the new church as part of the Easter celebrations.
The city has two sides: the sections that have retained an essence of normalcy—“it still feels like you’re in a warzone, but a different kind,” Meloni says—and their counterparts, the war-torn areas have been so bombed and shelled that the mind struggles to understand how it can be rebuilt. In this two-faced city, Meloni says, “most people have lost at least one relative in this war.”
A view inside the ancient Souk of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage site, March 2016.
http://time.com/4284588/inside-war-ravaged-syria/
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