Seeing a young Syrian refugee portrayed in the style of a Rembrandt painting is a visual break from the conflict images we’re used to. For photographer David Gross, that’s the point. He uses a dramatic lighting technique called chiaroscuro to photograph the Syrian refugees he works with in the hopes that by casting these subjects in a new light, we might also begin to see them that way.

“I have seen so many images of sad children shot in the verité journalistic style. We now know it is important to present distant people—“others”—as someone the viewer can connect with. I decided that shooting in a European style that in our culture stands for “dignified” was a