PERPIGNAN, France — Sergey Ponomarev’s first visit to Syria in 2009 — as a tourist — triggered memories of his childhood in the Soviet Union: such as when government security officers questioned him and his girlfriend when they bought tickets at bus stations in Damascus.

It was but a slight foreshadowing of what would await him when he returned to Syria as a freelance photographer in 2013 to cover the conflict in government-controlled territory as a freelance photographer. Government control had gotten much tighter. As a journalist, he now had personal minders who followed him everywhere and wrote reports on all of his meetings. This presented a challenge to Mr. Ponomarev, but one he says he was up to.

“As journalists we are striving to distinguish propaganda from what we can see with the naked eye,” he said.

Being from Russia, he said, is an advantage in the territory controlled by the government because many of its leaders and top generals were trained and educated there. This made it easier to get permission to work in Syria and also made it easy to connect with people on the street.

He returned twice to Syria in 2014 on assignment for The New York Times, again in government-controlled territory, and working with the Beirut bureau chief, Anne Barnard. Mr. Ponomarev’s photos from Syria have been on exhibit this week at the Visa pour l’Image photography festival here.

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While working with Ms. Barnard, he visited Homs in March 2014. At the time the city was split between forces of the Assad government and the rebels. On the government side, he said, life was somewhat normal, despite the sniper fire. But the opposition was being constantly shelled.

When they returned in June, after the government took full control of Homs, Mr. Ponomarev was shocked by what he saw. Although he had covered war and conflicts in Libya and Lebanon, he had never before seen the scale of destruction he encountered in the part of the city that had been controlled by the routed rebel forces.

“All that was left of the rebel side was rubble and these skeletons of houses,” Mr. Ponomarev said. “It reminded me of the destruction of Stalingrad and what I learned in school as a child about World War II.”

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