Kids are kids, even in Kabul
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11/13/2008 - 11/14/08
The pretty 15-year-old girl named Bilquis smiles shyly in front of a blackboard bearing a chalk drawing of a horse. Tony O'Brien took her picture at a village school in Shahidan, Afghanistan. Bilquis responds to a question from Mike Sullivan, the American with the tape recorder. "I would take visiting children to my family, show them my house and the historical places — Band-e Amir, the Buddha — and what we grow in our fields. We would give them yogurt and buttermilk. ... I would like to become a teacher and, if the government accepts me, teach here in Shahidan," she says. "But it is not my decision. I hope it will happen."This is one of 35 vignettes from O'Brien's just-released book, Afghan Dreams: Young Voices of Afghanistan (published by Bloomsbury Children's Books). In it, he and Sullivan offer paired portraits and statements from a diverse group of children in Afghanistan.
In conjunction with the publication of Afghan Dreams, Verve Gallery of Photography opens an exhibit of prints from the book on Nov. 14. Two other photographers also are featured in the gallery, in untitled exhibits that open the same day. Karin Rosenthal's Nudes in Water and Canyon Nudes are series on a body/landscape theme that the photographer developed in Greece and on Cape Cod. And Japan-born Ryuijie offers images of undersea creatures rendered pointillistically through his use of grainy film and platinum-palladium prints.
O'Brien got involved with the book project through Marc Talbert, who has written many children's books. "We got a book contract with Bloomsbury," the photographer said. "Originally it was going to be about the National Dance Institute of New Mexico and the influence of dance on kids. Then Marc decided to become a Jungian analyst; our editor had twins; and I started the documentary studies program [at the College of Santa Fe]; so everything got put on hold. Two years later, Bloomsbury called saying they wanted the book but with a different idea."
The photographer had been wishing he could do something involving children in Afghanistan. This project took shape as he zeroed in on the concept of doing portraits of Afghan kids and having them speak directly to their peers in the West. "Marc Talbert was the catalyst for the whole thing," he said. "I had never done a book before, and I really owe the project to him, but at a certain point it became apparent he was not going to be able to go. There was also some selfishness in it for me, because it was an opportunity to go back and explore and to see my cellmate, Aderali, again."
O'Brien was referring to the man with whom he had shared a prison cell for six weeks. That was in the 1980s, when he was covering the Soviet-Afghan war and was imprisoned for entering the country illegally. The photographer returned to Afghanistan in 2004, working with Greg Mortenson, co-founder of the Central Asia Institute, which is involved in education initiatives in the country's remote mountain regions.
For Afghan Dreams, O'Brien teamed up with Sullivan, his brother-in-law. Also a Santa Fe resident, Sullivan, a filmmaker and bush pilot with many years' experience working with oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, took care of recording the interviews. The project took place during four weeks in the summer of 2007.
"We flew from Los Angeles to Delhi, and then, through some contacts I had, we flew into Kabul," O'Brien said. "It turned out we were going to stay at Gandamack Lodge, which was set up by a friend, BBC correspondent Peter Jouvenal, as a place for journalists to stay. We were across the street from the Iranian embassy, so I felt we were quite safe, but it was really bizarre, because our room overlooked the prison I had been in."
O'Brien and Sullivan contacted people who could help them visit children in schools and literacy programs as well as in businesses like bakeries and weaving shops. Most of the work was carried out in the capital city, Kabul, but the two also ventured into the primitive mountainous areas to the north and west. "Kabul I knew. Bamian and Shahidan and Band-e Amir, where you have more of the Tajik and Uzbek influences, I wasn't familiar with," O'Brien said. "What we hoped to do was to show the different ethnic groups and the people from different social stratas, so it wasn't just street kids."
The faces O'Brien captured tell stories in themselves, but getting the kids to talk (through interpreters) was another challenge. "One of the main ideas was, 'What is your dream?' and they didn't quite understand it," he recalled. "We realized that in their circumstances, they don't really think about the future much. So one of the things we came up with was telling them the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp and magic carpet. That comes out of Iranian folklore, and it was something they could understand, and it began to allow them to think out of the box.
"We had to be careful. We're foreigners. We're Americans. And especially in Afghanistan, they don't want to offend their guests, so we had to be conscious whether they were telling us what they thought we wanted to hear. So many of the kids talked about how important education was to them, and we wondered if they just thought that's what the Americans wanted to hear. But wherever we went, that was the theme that so many spoke to."
The school system in Afghanistan has been disrupted by wars. When the Taliban was in power, girls couldn't go to school, O'Brien said. Now there is a school system again, but it is dysfunctional, and the teachers are poorly paid. And many of the children must work because their families have no money.
One portrait features 12-year-old Gul Mohammed in Kabul's Muratani neighborhood. He attends school four hours a day. Before and after, he sells peppers from a wheelbarrow and tries to avoid the police, who beat him and make him pay a fee.
The children in the photos range from tender and vulnerable like Majaasin, 11, who dreams of painting "birds, gardens, beautiful places," to a little guy with a real macho stance and expression. It could easily be a picture of an American kid.
"They're the same everywhere," O'Brien said. "It's one of the things I've seen in my travels. Kids are kids. And we don't pay enough attention to what they say."
details
Tony O'Brien: Afghan Dreams; also photographs by Karin Rosenthal & Ryuijie
Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14; exhibits through Jan. 10, 2009
Afghan Dreams book signing 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15
Verve Gallery of Photography, 219 E. Marcy St., 982-5009
