While public debate around social media has become dominated by issues regarding free expression, user privacy, the power of tech companies and the like, it’s easy to forget that for most people, it’s just how they go about keeping in touch with the world. On Instagram, for example, millions of people use it as a living scrapbook — a place to document mundane moments and important milestones alike, whether it’s a night out of with friends or a graduation ceremony. For most of those users, it does so indefinitely, an ongoing capturing of all things present, with little sense of what might be worth featuring in the future. Such was the case for one Syrian soldier, documenting the mundane and the milestones on his Instagram feed — until the day the militants who captured him and his phone uploaded a photo of his decapitated head to his account.

This isn’t the story of the good guys versus the bad guys in Syria. History will judge the Assad regime harshly for its innumerable war crimes and strategic cruelty toward its own populace, as will it judge the barbarity of militants who mock the rules of war through executions of captives.

Instead, this is the story of an Instagram account, and the life it documented over a series of 45 photos.