Photographer Joseph Eid captures photos of Palmyra – one of the world’s most intact ancient ruins – before and after IS occupation.

A beheaded and mutilated statue stands in the destroyed Palmyra Museum
A beheaded and mutilated statue stands in the destroyed Palmyra Museum © Joseph Eid/Getty

One of the first to return was Joseph Eid, a Lebanese photographer with Agence France-Presse, who’d visited the Unesco World Heritage Site in 2014 and left with a feeling of dread. “When I arrived two years ago, I did my best to document the tiniest things; there was an idea haunting me that maybe the world wouldn’t be able to see these amazing vestiges again.” Within a year, his fears for Palmyra were realized. “The pictures I had were like a treasure for me, as they were almost the last pictures of Palmyra as the world knew it.”