Images of Afghanistan • Photographer's Notes

The photographs in this collection reveal an Afghanistan very different from the one we know today. What we see in these images is not just an Afghanistan at peace, but also a people at peace with themselves, going about their daily routines.

Taken over thirty years ago and unseen by the public until 2005, the photographs show the vibrancy and nuance of an ancient culture nearly lost to 25 years of war and political turmoil. They portray the laughing children and the handsome faces of a rugged and courageous people living as they have for centuries. These images were taken prior to the Russian invasion and many years before civil war wracked the country and allowed the establishment of the murderous rule of the Taliban and invasion of foreign fighters.

From the perspective of a young traveler, one might say the 1970s saw Afghanistan at it’s best. With only recently opened borders, the country offered a kind of adventure travel not often seen since: safe, inexpensive travel through a land of towering mountains concealing verdant orchards and untouched torrents; vast deserts, wandering nomad tribes, and a welcoming people generous far beyond their means.

These images show a wide breadth of the country from intimate portraits to the towering 5th-century Buddhas of Bamian, since destroyed by Taliban extremists. The photographs convey a complex Afghanistan, a culture rich in history and tradition but modernizing and connecting to the outside world. The exhibition includes candid shots of Afghans at work and at play. Taken at a time when political content would have been irrelevant, when seen as a whole the exhibition offers the viewer a refreshing change from the ubiquitous, dreary media images of Afghanistan today.

This was a time when the economy was thriving, people were working and there was a burgeoning tourist trade. Libraries, schools and universities were open to most. Food was plentiful. Gardens and orchards were lovingly tended, and the ancient irrigation systems functioned as they had for centuries. The most beautiful fruits and vegetables in all of Central Asia could be had in the local markets. The bazaars were brimming with antique carpets, jewelry, beadwork and textiles. Foreign aid had built fine highways and the modern airports at Kabul and Kandahar were served by airlines from Europe, Russia, India and beyond.

The Afghans loved their King, Mohammed Zahir Shah. They prayed, and they loved their land, their gardens and their families. Afghanistan was then a nation with a thriving intellectual community with free exchange of ideas, respectful of its rich cultural heritage and seemingly wiling to embrace its ethnic diversity.

Hidden from the casual traveler, however, were political, religious and cultural factors that would, in the ensuing years, radically change the Afghanistan I was experiencing.

To be sure, this was a poor country; then, as now, one of the poorest on the planet. But this was a nation, hidden away in central Asia, with a recorded history dating to before 3000 BC. The ancient land had seen the coming of Alexander the Great and was an outpost of Greek culture. In the 3rd - 5th centuries it had been a great center of Buddhist culture and learning. It was the home of Tamerlane and had been invaded by Genghis Khan. The city of Balkh, known since antiquity as the Mother of Cities, located near present day Mazar-I-Sharif, was the birthplace of the beloved Sufi poet Jellaludin Rumi.

The Afghanistan we know today is a nation laid waste by more than 25 years of war and discord. Ten years of Russian occupation has left the land littered with perhaps millions of land mines, Many thousands of Afghans have been killed. Countless others have been maimed, blinded, displaced and nearly forgotten. This and the brutal rule of the Taliban, even now in resurgence, have changed the country and its people, perhaps forever. To be hopeful for Afghanistan’s future we may find it helpful to look back at an era in it’s recent past when the nation was at peace.

I had the good fortune to photograph over several years in Afghanistan in the early 1970s. This was before the Soviet occupation and before the ensuing civil war and subsequent rise of the Taliban. It was a special time few Americans witnessed. I fell in love with the Afghan people, their art, culture, their families and their history. I grew to admire their goodness, generosity and their fierce independence.

In 1970 Afghanistan was about as remote a place as any on earth. Tucked away in the north east corner of Central Asia, it was however on the “Silk Road” of the time. This was the track that Hippies followed to get to India, Nepal and beyond. I had known little about Afghanistan until one night around a camp-fire on the beach near the town of Vai, at the very eastern tip of Crete. There I met a young woman from New Zealand who had just crossed Asia by bus. She had the most remarkable tales to tell about the mountainous desert kingdom: sleeping in the chai-khana, the tea houses, riding on the tops of reeling rickety buses through perilous gorges, 150 foot Buddhas carved into cliffs, exploring ancient caravansaray. I knew I had to go.

I first arrived in Afghanistan in the summer of 1970. It was near the end of August and it was hot. I entered through the border crossing at Spin Boldak/Chaman, from Pakistan, south of Kandahar. I remember looking at the thermometer in the hotel I booked into in Kandahar at the Herat gate. It read 126 degrees. I had hitchhiked to Kandahar from Istanbul, via Tehran and across Iran’s Dasht-I-Margo, the Desert of Death. It was nearly, but not quite, as bad as it sounds. Thus began my time in Afghanistan. Over the next five years I visited the country five times and spent nearly 40 months there. I had not planned to stay that long. Illness kept me there through the first winter. Then Spring arrived and I ventured into the countryside. The more I saw and experienced the more taken by the people, the landscape and culture I became.

I loved being there. Travel was cheap, safe and easy. The people were friendly, open and generous beyond their means. The sounds, sights and smells of everyday life were exhilarating. The contrasts were amazing: the deserts ran on seemingly without end. The mountains concealed green oases of vineyards, lush gardens and apricot and mulberry groves. Even the names of the mountains were intoxicating: the Koh-I Baba, the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs. This was indeed a different world. It seemed I could not leave.

I personally developed and printed these images during that period and kept them for my own use, showing them to friends and family as a record of my travels. For many years it had been my intention to revisit the photos, edit them and relearn the printing process in order to share the images on a broader scale. In 2004, I had the opportunity to do so and began the process.

Regrettably, 30 years of casual storage in the south Florida heat and humidity had resulted some damage to the film, thus the negatives needed to be scanned and restored digitally to remove spots and distortions. Reproducing the images photographically proved problematic so I have presented them as inkjet prints using archival inks and state-of-the-art fiber-based paper.

Photographs are a deft combination of time and place, light, composition, texture and content. In many of these images the sense of timelessness is strong, with little or no evidence of modern intrusion. I found the Afghans to be easily approachable camera in hand, but discovered that concealing the camera beneath my jacket meant I would not gather a crowd of youngsters following me, clamoring for bakshish, a little gift, and for their pictures to be taken. It is often noted that very few of the photos include girls or women. This is indeed so; even in the more relaxed and enlightened time of my visit, I felt it somehow intrusive to photograph women. I felt awkward and I regret this now.

All images were originally produced using a variety of 35mm Kodak, Ilford and Agfa films. All photos were shot using Nikon F and Nikkormat cameras and Nikon 24mm, 28mm, 50mm and 105mm lenses.