Syria on my mind
Noël Quidu
pour Paris Match
Palmyra, Aleppo, eastern Ghouta. I took the photos in the course of five assignments in Syria for Paris Match, between March 2016 and March 2018. I see them as direct, unfiltered eye-witness reporting of epic battles in this part of the world. Determination, suffering and vulnerability can be seen in the faces of the people living, or rather surviving, in the rubble. The nightmare has been going on for seven years now, for all Syrians, and it is not over. Its legacy will be a land in ruins, a country drained of its lifeblood, and the people profoundly traumatized for many long years to come.
It is important to note that not a single one of these pictures was “validated” by the people accompanying me on these assignments, and that includes the representative of the Ministry of Information. No one examined my hard disk or asked me not to show certain pictures. It is true that I was not able to photograph everything in Syria, but it’s not always possible to do that in other theaters of operation, or with other armed forces, whether French, British, American or Russian.
Preview
There was no difference compared to the restrictions I’ve had to comply with in Iraq, Afghanistan and Mali, or even further back in time, in Bosnia and Chechnya. Soldiers usually hate having their photos taken, particularly if they’re manning a checkpoint. Getting or not getting a shot can sometimes depend on a chance remark or a brief chat, the way you look, or just the circumstances, such as sharing a cigarette. Fighters can either be very proud to be seen and prominent, or can shy away as soon as they spot a camera. Sometimes they want to hide absolutely everything; at other times, they’ll show you all there is to see, even the very worst abuses. If you look closely at fighters, you’ll notice something that has always fascinated me, which is that as a conflict goes on and on, so the combatants look more and more alike, even when they are diametrically opposed, as is the case in Ghouta with soldiers loyal to the regime and the rebels.
No matter what the conflict is, no matter what side of the war I cover, I try to have the image convey the real situation as I saw it with my own eyes, and as accurately as possible, in a sincere and unswerving pursuit of honest journalism.
Noël Quidu
