Syria (1999)

The series of photographies from Syria, mainly from Damascus, Hama and Aleppo, was taken in November 1999. Years before the war in Syria. In these pictures, Stefanie Bürkle portrays the cities, the people living there and 5,000-year history of development from her very own perspective. Her gaze touches on the historical as well as the very present and everyday building sites and fractures in the urban fabric.

To understand the difficulties involved in preserving old towns like Aleppo and Damascus, or the city of Hama totally destroyed 1976 by Hafiz Assad father of Bashar, Stefanie Bürkle also looks at the outskirts of the historic cities. There she finds, on the one hand, the settlement structures imposed by the state and, on the other, illegal buildings as a result of the rural exodus on the one hand and the inner-city exodus of the „middle class“ on the other. As a result, it is mainly poor city dwellers or newly arrived rural populations who remain in the unrenovated historic old town of Aleppo. This is leading to a ruralization of the old city, while the surrounding countryside is becoming increasingly urbanized.

The phototographies show power and poverty of Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, all vanished nowadays after years of war.