Last week I read an interesting Aljazeera feature Afghan photographers shoot to glory, which as well as starting me on a search to see more of the work of the Afghan photographers featured, also sent me looking at the work of Reza who toegether with his brother Manoocher Deghati founded the Aina (mirror in Farsi) media and photography school, where most of these photographers studied, in Kabul in 2001.
Reza is well known for his work around the world for the National Geographic Magazine, which is perhaps why I’ve not really looked much at his work before. There is something about the whole NatGeo look and approach – at least in modern times – that I often find too slick and glossy – and I rather like photographs that are a rather more down and dirty – perhaps rather more like the world itself. NatGeo tends to be a little too American and too coffee-table for my taste, though of course that is being unfair on photographers such as Reza, born in Iran and, like his brother, an Iranian-French photojournalist. He’s won major awards in photography for his work and been honoured by France and UNICEF, and looking at his work you can see why.
After studying film-making in Rome, Manoocher returned to Iran to photograph the revolution and worked for around ten years for the agency SIPA, founded by the legendary Turkish photojournalist Göksin Sipahioglu (one day I must find and resurrect the article I wrote about him) in 1973 in Iran and later in the USA, then mainly for AFP before going to Kabul to found Aina, and is now Middle East Regional Photo Editor for the Associated Press (AP), based in Cairo.
There are some pictures in the Aljazeera feature, but you can find more of their work on the web. The is a portfolio on AFP for Massoud Hossaini as well as his work at World Press Photo. Farzana Wahidy who is his wife and another fine photographer also appears in a feature
Shooting Stars: Reza presents Farzana Wahidy, where his introduction ends with the words “Farzana is telling the story of Afghanistan from the inside.” This is something that is important and true about all these photographers. Fardin Waezi, has his own blog which makes the same point in its title, Though Afghan Eyes. He learnt his photography starting at the age of 7 in his father’s photography studio in Kabul.
Barat Ali Batoor grew up as an Afghan refugee in Pakistan and going to his country for the first time in 2001, he taught himself photography in 2002 to “draw the world’s attention to the plight of the Afghan people the problems facing the country.” You can see his remarkable and controversal images of dancing boy entertainers on his site.