War and peace: a Syrian couple staged a wedding photo shoot in the ruins of Homs

The city of Homs is probably the clearest evidence of how much the civil war has affected the life of Syria. Homs is located 162 kilometers north of Damascus. Once it was the third largest city in the country, where more than 600 thousand people lived. But when Homs became a rebel outpost in 2011, government forces launched a series of strikes on it. The battle almost destroyed the city completely, and the attacks left behind a lot of ruins.

But despite the destruction, ordinary life continues here — at least as far as possible. On February 5, 18-year-old Nada Merhi and 27-year-old Hassan Youssef even filmed their wedding photo shoot against the ruins in Homs.

(11 photos in total)

Source: The Independent

Joseph Eid, a photographer for the AFP news agency, accompanied the couple and their wedding photographer Jafar Merai during the filming. Merai told Eid that he wanted to show that life is stronger than death.

This is not the first wedding to be photographed against the ruins in Homs. At the end of last year, Merai photographed another couple. On his Facebook page, he explained that these photos are "evidence that life is slowly going on."

Although the wedding photos of Merhi and Youssef indicate that life in Syria may be similar to normal, the pictures also touch on the theme of the complexity and ambiguity of the war.

In the photos, Youssef is dressed in a military uniform. He serves in the Syrian army, the same one that participated in the destruction of Homs for years of bombing, artillery attacks, as well as rocket and grenade attacks aimed at the rebels occupying the city.

Last summer, similar pictures appeared showing a wedding in Homs in the dilapidated Church of St. George, a Greek Orthodox church that lost its roof due to the war.