Showing more by showing less
Jérôme had the idea for the project after his first trip to Aleppo in 2012. "A lot of people were photographing the fighting or the hospitals. I wanted to do something different," he says. "It can be hard to keep audiences' attention on a conflict like this. So instead of wounded fighters, I took pictures of the streets. Sometimes you can show more by showing less. You leave space for viewers to form their own ideas, to use their imagination."
These cityscapes reveal in forensic detail the scale of destruction on the eastern side of the city. By showing market squares or shuttered-up shopfronts – the types of places that you see in cities the world over – Jérôme's images make viewers reflect on how it might feel to see the cities they know under these circumstances. "Most people live in cities – it's universal," he says.
While the shattered bricks and mortar work as a kind of metaphor for the impact of war on Syrian society, they also tell an authentic story about the reality on the ground. "When the city is under siege, it becomes like a ghost town," says Jérôme. "People don't go on the streets because of the danger of snipers."
As with the hanging sheets, the fighters have repurposed materials they have found in the buildings and streets. An ornately decorative wooden-framed mirror is being used as "an anti-sniper mirror", for example. "It's a very simple, very efficient trick the fighters use to see if there's a sniper around the corner of the street," Jérôme explains.