Seven

Seven is the age of all of these children. It is also the number of years the Syrian Civil War has been raging, still with no end in sight. All of these children are born in Syria yet most of them cannot remember their homeland. Like millions of other, their parents made the difficult decision to leave their country and become refugees. Now they are living in rented accommodation or in makeshift housing in one of the huge refugee camps in northern Jordan, close to the Syrian border. In normal times, a photographer would have come to their schools to take their pictures, marking the years and showing them growing up. No such luxury is available in refugee camps. Chris de Bode wanted to show the human face of seven years of war through the portraits of these seven year olds. These children cannot remember Syria. When and if they return to Syria there may be very little left to go back to.

Three of the works are acquired by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018.