Jérôme Sessini builds a passion for photography, discovering documentary photography through books shown by a friend, a photographer. He initiates his own practice, shooting people, landscapes and daily lives of those around his native Eastern France. Sessini covers the international current events: Palestine, Iraq (from 2003 to 2008), Aristide’s fall in Haiti (2004), the conquest of Mogadishu by the Islamic militias and the war in Lebanon (2006), the Libya war (2011) and Syria (2012). Sessini’s work is published by prestigious newspapers and magazines among which Newsweek, Stern, Paris-Match as well as Le Monde and the Wall Street Journal. His photography also leads to single exhibitions at the Visa Photo Festival in Perpignan, at the Rencontres d’Arles, the Bibliothèque nationale François-Mitterrand, as well as with the French Ministry of Culture. In 2008, Jerome Sessini starts a long time project in Mexico, a dive into the drug cartels’ war. This work has been awarded twice with the F-Award and a Getty Grant, and was published by Contrasto with his first monography “The Wrong Side”. Jérôme Sessini joined Magnum in 2012, and he received a World Press Photo award for his work in Aleppo in 2013.
