Layers of ancient culture and religion overlap with the present day in Damascus. Frizzi Krella depicts this vibrant city in all its ambivalence in her black-and-white and color photographs. She focuses on everyday life scarred by war and views the city and its inhabitants with empathy and tenderness. Krella’s photographs create a poetic proximity that reveals a unique snapshot of Damascus shortly before the fall of the Assad regime: a backyard ladder that seems to grow skywards; a conversation at the market, between open sacks of spices; a satellite disk on a rooftop. The assumed contradictions of past and present merge into a sensual oneness in