Published by 5 Continents Editions in 2007, Savonneries d’Alep is a concise photographic study of soap workshops in Aleppo, Syria. Payram’s photographs are accompanied by text from Nicolas Cartier, keeping the book’s authorship clearly collaborative: the images belong to the photographer, while the written account provides a distinct interpretive presence. The subject is both local and materially specific—the spaces, processes, and working environment of Aleppo’s soap-making tradition—yet the book approaches it through the disciplined form of a photobook rather than a general cultural survey.

Its scale is notably compact: 48 pages containing 57 duotone illustrations. That economy gives the project a concentrated character, allowing the photographs and Cartier’s text to function as closely related parts of a short, deliberate publication. The duotone treatment places emphasis on tonal structure, texture, surfaces, and the visual rhythm of workshop life, while the landscape format—38 × 24 cm—offers a broad horizontal field suited to architectural interiors, workspaces, and the relation between objects and their surroundings.

For collectors, Savonneries d’Alep merits attention as a focused record of a specific urban craft context, shaped by the collaboration of a photographer and an author rather than by image-making alone. Its French-language presentation, hardcover format, and carefully defined physical proportions make the object inseparable from its editorial conception. The book’s interest lies in this combination of place, material practice, restrained photographic treatment, and compact design: a small, purposeful volume that gives an established subject the sustained attention of contemporary book form.