It is a paradox of war
that the injury of a single person
makes the biggest impression on us;
the one whose face we can see,
the one whose name and fate
we can actually recall. The bigger
the number of the victims
the less we are touched emotionally.
In 2014 and 2015 Kai Wiedenhöfer photographed for five months Syrian war wounded.
Currently every weak 6 000 Syrians are injured. Syrian Collateral depicts forty of them in calm portraits which are complemented by long captions describing in detail each injureds fate. The portraits are combined with large panoramic landscapes of destroyed Syrian cities mostly Kobane. The injured and panoramas are interrupted by double paged fact sheets which provided the reader with basic figures about the damage which is done to Syria. For example the destruction of 2,1 million homes. Syrian Collateral is a quiet compendium of the most horrific conflict in our time.
