abstract war

War-damaged interior surface in Damascus, photographed by Sami Ajouri for the Habitats series, project Abstract War, 2025

Abstract War is an extended body of photographic work capturing the suburbs of Damascus in 2025, a few months after the fall of the Assad regime and after fifteen years of brutal civil war. Constant bombardment destroyed many districts in and around Syrian cities. These landscapes of rubble still stand as living witnesses to the horrors and absurdity of this war.

Waste

Waste of War Damascus 2025 img 3619

Waste of War – Central waste sorting site, Damascus, 2025. Photographed a few months after the fall of the Assad regime, this series documents a manual waste sorting site in Damascus. Adults and children work there under unsafe conditions, sorting through the city’s waste by hand. The site reflects years of civil war, economic collapse, […]

Car corps

Abstract War Cars 2025 img 6107

“Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. … The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we […]

Faces

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The men in these photographs were not professional soldiers. They were everyday people—farmers, workers, drivers—who decided to take up arms against an oppressive government. As I spent time with them, the reality of their situation unfolded in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I captured quiet, raw moments of emotional impact. Perhaps these images reveal the human […]

The flood

sami ajouri photography _ syria

During the Syrian Civil War, in a calculated effort to suppress regions of rebellion, the regime blocked the flow of water from the Queiq River, flooding areas in the province of Idlib, including the village of Abu Al-Duhur. This man-made disaster was intended to flood the region and disrupt the growing resistance in the area, […]

Raised in the mud

sami ajouri photography

The refugee camps along the Turkish-Syrian border in 2012 were meant to be a refuge, but they were little more than rows of makeshift tents on barren land. Thousands of families, uprooted by war, arrived seeking safety, only to face a new struggle—one of survival under harsh conditions. Among the endless lines of tents and […]