Bertrand Cavalier photographs places that have been marked by armed conflict in the past, and the people who live in them now. In *Concrete Doesn’t Burn*, published by Fw:Books in 2020, the urban landscape is central: streets, walls, and structures that still bear traces of political upheaval, long since absorbed into ordinary life. For inhabitants, this is often no more than the backdrop against which they live. Cavalier’s interest lies in how political upheaval becomes visible in the urban landscape and how it affects the lives of those who live in it.

The book’s method is observational. Rather than documenting conflict directly, Cavalier photographs townspeople in their own context, revealing their connection with their environment. Politics, in his framing, works subliminally, shaping habits and dictating behaviour without announcing itself. The photographs register this pressure without illustration or drama.

The physical object is modest and considered. At 24 by 29.5 centimetres and running 160 pages in duotone, the book gives Cavalier’s restrained images room to breathe. Hans Gremmen is credited as the designer, and the softcover format keeps the book in dialogue with the lived-in quality of its subject.

Cavalier’s broader interest is in how political history remains legible in the built environment and how photography can look closely at what remains. A related later photobook, *Permanent Concern*, consists of smartphone photographs he took in the Netherlands in 2021. *Concrete Doesn’t Burn* stands as a focused statement on how urban space carries memory, and how easily that memory is overlooked.