Carmignac Photojournalism Award - 14th edition Afghanistan: No Woman's Land

An Intimate Look into the Battle for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

A COLLABORATIVE REPORT BY MÉLISSA CORNET AND KIANA HAYERI

The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to the condition of women and girls in Afghanistan following the return of the Taliban to power in August 2021. The Award was granted to the reporting project proposed by the duo of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and French researcher Mélissa Cornet, which was produced over a six-month period with the support of the Fondation Carmignac.

Over the course of the last six months, Kiana and Mélissa travelled to seven provinces in Afghanistan* to investigate the conditions imposed on women and girls by the Taliban, which, according to Amnesty International's research, could constitute a possible crime against humanity of gender-based persecution.

They met with more than 100 women and girls, barred from going to school, forced to stay at home, women journalists and activists continuing to fight for their rights, mothers watching with horror as history repeats itself for their daughters, as well as LGBTQI+ individuals. They documented how the Taliban, allowed by a deeply patriarchal society, have systematically erased women from society, taking away their most basic rights: to go to school, to university, to work, to travel, to dress as they wish, to go to public baths, to parks, or even to the beauty salon.

The starkest change that Kiana and Mélissa noted since August 2021 was the general loss of hope among women that things might improve for them, as dreams of having an education and becoming members of society were shattered before them, becoming the primary victims of recurring economic and food crises, and a health system that has all but collapsed. In the words of one women’s rights activist, who has since left the country, seeing no future for herself in Afghanistan: ''We have forgotten joy, we don’t know from where any can be found. I’ve lost all motivation. I cry alone, hidden. It’s as if someone has locked me in a room and won’t let me outside. Even food has no taste.''

Kiana and Mélissa used different media to document this highly sensitive situation, including photographs, sketches, and videos, but also art created collaboratively with Afghan teenage girls.

Jalal Abad, Nangarhar, Afghanistan, February 12, 2024. A family, recently deported out of Pakistan has temporarily settled in suburban neighbourhood of Jalal Abad in eastern Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been forced out of Pakistan following the ongoing crackdown on illegal foreigners, some of which after decades of living in Pakistan. Women and girls are the most affected by the consequences of forced displacement, with for example high rates of child marriage.

Kabul, Afghanistan, February 17, 2024. In West Kabul, a private institute teaches 700 high school girls the American curriculum in English, though they can't earn Afghan education certificates or attend university locally, as women's education is restricted. Remarkably, the school has tacit approval from local Taliban authorities. Security measures are strict, with armed guards monitoring entrances. Despite prior bombings, the institute remains full, with students aspiring to study abroad. Girls' high schools haven't reopened post-Taliban, limiting education to grade 6. Yet, underground schools persist, educating girls at great peril in homes, mosques, and other venues.

Kabul, Kabul, Afghanistan, February 3, 2024. Girls playing in the snow in western Kabul behind an apartment block, off the main road. Since the takeover, women and girls' rights to move without a male chaperon or to go to parks have been curtailed, and very few opportunities to find joy in their daily lives remain. A snowstorm in a quiet neighbourhood of Kabul western suburb offered such a chance for an hour of playing together. Even then, an eye is always kept on the surroundings, looking for a sign of a Taliban patrol.

Yamit District, Badakhshan, Afghanistan, May 10, 2024. Kheshroo's daughter and her cousin, both grade 11 students who were put out of school, committed suicide a year before by throwing themselves in the water. The family plays in puddles of water, among troops of yaks, horses and goats, in front of the Wakhan mountains, Wakhan, a region that had never been controlled by the Taliban before 2021.

Michael Joseph: Lost & Found

By Michael Joseph

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 144 pages

Lost & Found documents a contemporary American subculture of young Travelers through raw, striking portraiture and intimate storytelling. These Travelers abandon home to move around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping in a nomadic, transient existence outside of mainstream society. Along their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends.

The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence. The black and white portraits are made in public, on the street, using natural light. Individual stories, as a collection, form a greater narrative. Over ten years in the making, Joseph’s portraits reveal the human condition. They capture courage, tenderness, and determination in his subjects that have been largely ignored and unseen.

An incredible book that we highly recommend! All About Photo

All About Michael Joseph

I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now

By Pauline Vermare

Publisher : Aperture

2024 | 440 pages

I’m So Happy You Are Here presents a much-needed counterpoint, complement, and challenge to historical precedents and the established canon of Japanese photography. This restorative history presents a wide range of photographic approaches brought to bear on the lived experiences and perspectives of women in Japanese society. Editors Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, curator and writer Takeuchi Mariko, and photo-historians Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick provide a critical historical and contemporary framework for understanding the work in three richly illustrated essays. Additional context is provided by an in-depth illustrated bibliography by Marc Feustel and Russet Lederman, and a selection of key critical writings from leading Japanese curators, critics, and historians such as Kasahara Michiko, Fuku Noriko, and others, many of which will be published in translation for the first time. While this book does not claim to be fully comprehensive or encyclopedic, its goal is to provide a solid foundation for a more thorough conversation about the contributions of Japanese women to photography—and an indispensable resource for anyone interested in a more robust history of Japanese photography.

Lisa McCord: Rotan Switch

By Lisa McCord

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 204 pages

Rotan Switch is the first monograph by Lisa McCord, documenting life on her grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark—the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it hasn’t been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of race and injustice. Collected over the last forty-four years, these images and stories are a reflection on the people and places that have taught McCord the meaning of the word home. It is also a self-exploration into her inherently complicated role in this community as both the photographer and the granddaughter of the farm owner.
This publication is a long-term project, constructed from McCord's analog photographs, family snapshots and ephemera. Including, monochrome photographs, color polaroids, and recipes.

All About Lisa McCord

João Pina: Tarrafal

By João Pina

Publisher : GOST Books

2024 | 284 pages

João Pina draws upon his family history to tell the story of the Portuguese concentration camp at Tarrafal, Cape Verde which operated between 1936 and 1974. The visual history of the camp is told through the only known photographs taken inside the Tarrafal camp, combined with correspondence, archives, objects and Pina’s own contemporary photographs. Collectively these materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the past—and the resistance to it—on the 50th anniversary of its demise. In 1949, Pina’s grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalho—a young communist militant— was sent to the camp. Later that year Guilherme’s parents were granted unprecedented permission to visit their son and using a Rolleiflex camera they photographed all the living prisoners and the graves of the ones who had died in the camp. This extensive visual record—the only one ever made inside the concentration camp—was created with the intent of reporting back to the families of the other prisoners held in the camp or had died there. Seventy years later, in 2019, Pina began investigating a box in his family archive containing the negatives, contact sheets, vintage prints of these pictures made inside the camp, along with related letters and telegrams sent from his grandfather.

Carmignac Photojournalism Award - 14th edition Afghanistan: No Woman's Land

An Intimate Look into the Battle for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

A COLLABORATIVE REPORT BY MÉLISSA CORNET AND KIANA HAYERI

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