Jérôme Sessini initially found documentary photography through books and photographing people around his hometown in eastern France. He earned renown by digging below the news to capture scenes that are representative of wider issues. From the time he started photographing conflicts, his lens always seemed to spin toward people and their relationship with their environment.
From the rubble-covered streets of Aleppo to the barricades of Kyiv, Sessini has covered many of the major conflicts of the last decades: The Iraq war (2003 to 2008), the fall of Haitian president Aristide (2004), the seizure of Mogadishu by Islamic militias and the war in Lebanon (2006), the wars in Libya (2011) and Syria (2012-2013), as well as the Ukrainian war (2014-).
After fifteen years at the heart of current affairs he stepped back to focus on broader issues and context, developing a photographic practice that values long-term projects and introspective stories.
In 2008 he photographed the impact of violence resulting from warring drug cartels in Mexico, a project that received a number of awards and was published as The Wrong Side (Contrasto, 2012).
In 2018 he began a long-term project on the opioid crisis in America, attempting to make sense of the landscapes and context behind one of the greatest internal threats the country has ever faced. This ongoing work was awarded the Pierre & Alexandre Boulat Prize in 2018.
Sessini joined Magnum Photos in 2012 and became a full member in 2016. His work is widely acknowledged and has been published by outlets including from The New Yorker, Time Magazine and De Standaard among many others. Prints of his work have been exhibited internationally in festivals and museums, among which are Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Barbican and the ICP.