“The Wrong Side”

From 2008 to 2011, the photojournalist Jerome Sessini submerged himself in some of the most violent Mexican cities—Culiacán, Tijuana, and Ciudad Juárez—and documented their increasing social decomposition. Recently published by Contrasto as a book titled “The Wrong Side,” these photographs offer vivid insight into the urban landscapes of the Mexican border. “I’ve always been fascinated by Mexico,” Sessini told me. “I felt it necessary to enter the houses, to hear the stories of the workers, prostitutes, and heroin addicts, and to show an image other than the cliché of the super-rich Mexican drug lord with a mustache and a golden rifle.”
Below is a selection of images from “The Wrong Side.”

Jérôme Sessini (b.1968) began his career with the GAMMA agency following the Kosovo war in 1999. Since then he has covered many events: the second intifada, the conflict in Iraq, the Haitian crisis of 2004, the capture of Mogadishu and the Lebanon War. In 2008, he started his Mexican project, 'So far from God, too close to America', a dive into the drug cartels' war in Mexico. This project has already been awarded twice with the F-Award and a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography. It is superbly presented here in scores of beautifully reproduced images.