Bureaucracy

Kabul, June 7, 2010

I’m working on a story about the Afghan bureaucracy. I’m quite stuck. First of all because it’s hard to have access to photograph in the ministries, and second because it’s not clear to me what I want. It could be a portrait story. It could be about the places. The subject is quite dull itself, visually there is not much there, this is exactly the kind of story that can come out really bad. I’m taking pictures of offices and bureaucrats.

I want to use this post to collect my ideas.

It could be interesting to capture the stratifications of the many empires that conquered this land and in turn tried to reshape its istitutions. Russian buildings now inhabited by market oriented, American trained bureaucrats.

In my work I would like some of the atmosphere of Guy Tillim’s Avenue Patrice Lumumba, the surrealist and paradoxical nightmare of Kafka’s “The trial”, as well as my omnipresent obsession for the mood and the light in Majoli’s work. I see the story in color, medium format kind of photography, sharp, silent. I don’t want portraits with somebody staring at me from a desk. Maybe I can ask them to pretend they are working (I can not hope for something real in a 30 minutes tour with two people that tell me what can I photograph and 5 minutes in a single office, as usual what the photographer will try to achieve is an illusion that resembles reality). Public officers are really concern about security. I’m not allowed to photograph most of the places. They are scared the pictures can be used to stage attacks on government buildings.

It’s more or less two days that in separate moments I try to write this post. I was hoping that the act of writing would have materialized some ideas. And that was exactly what happened!

I can focus this story on the Russian made building, the overlapping images of old building and new yuppies, and teas and afghan handshaking and huggings and power  boastings and salam aleikums and tea again. Everything is already there, I just need to put it together, slowly, a tea at the time, following the slow pace of Kabul. A pace that is sometimes painfully slow, considering the many holidays of the government employees. I already try last time to work on this story but there wasn’t time enough.

I need to go in there with some ideas in my mind to play around, but I also know that a story can then take a life of itself an end up with something completely different. I will try to let it flow as much as I can. Inshallah.

p.s. I strongly suggest to read this article, it’s a good picture of what is going on in Afghanistan and what the outcome of this war will be.

Mudwalls

26-05-10 Kunduz

After a brief visit to Kabul and some days in Maza-i-Sharif also my visit in Kunduz is over.

I can’t really say I’m sad of leaving Kunduz. I don’t feel good vibrations here. This city is one of the most conservative of the north. During a security training we have been told there is a real possibility the Taliban could take control of the city and all the international workers need to be evacuated.

Out of the armoured car runs burka-clad women, markets, and wheat plantations. I try to catch some with my camera. A simple walk through the city is simply impossible for security reason. Is hard to get some glimpses of the real life of the Afghans.

(They wear slippers all the time, I saw Afghans wearing slippers on every climate or terrain. Ready to be taken off at the entrance of a house. I spend most of my time here putting my shoes on and off.)

Another big luxury is being out after 6pm, when the fierce sunlight start fading and pink and blue fill the air. So most of the time I’m photographing in the middle of the day.

Today I’m in Taloqan, somewhere in the north. Here is safer. But forget about the all rules of photo-journalism: spend time with the people, be part of the environment. We drive into the middle of the market, with and armoured car and I have 20 minutes to photograph, with an escort of hundred of children with me. Forget about being invisible.

Sometimes I feel my idea of photography is different from what people expect from me. What is my idea? Probably something natural, taken from everyday life. Images that comes from sharing with my subjects. But I don’t share much here. I don’t speak the language and I can not spend much time with anybody.

It’s not really a big deal, it’s just hard, I need to work little by little with what I can get. Anyway my work here is great, I love it. I get to see places that would be impossible to access otherwise. And I’m paid to photograph and travel so I couldn’t ask more.
I’m not completely convinced that this work is ethically correct. Working for a development agency means being part of what we westerner are doing here. I met this consultant in a guest-house. We talked about the international aid. “Most of the time” he tells me “medias are reporting pleads for an increase of development spending, but it’s not more money that would solve the problem”. These agencies are usually desperate to spend money. They receive funding for their projects and if they don’t spend everything they will receive a smaller amount the following year. Funnelling all this money in one of the poorest country on earth create huge corruption and unbalances the market. The prices are booming because a new elite of riches is created.

Often these agencies need to follow standards related the their home country. You can imagine how much can cost to build an house with German construction standard in the middle of Afghanistan.

Cooperation is a big, big business. Most of the workers are willing to help the population but is the whole system that seems to make it impossible.

And then there is our cultural colonization. What we are doing here is turning this country in a market economy, and teaching them our way of living. And I’m just not so sure ours is the best possible way.

Northern Afghanistan is mainly cultivated on rice and wheat. Along the way you can see farmers cutting wheat slowly with their sickle or boys sitting on a ox-pulled plough. They work their land the same way they did centauries ago. Most of the population live in mud houses villages with no running water or electricity.

I’m walking again along a muddy path with my friend, the consultant: “Sometime I sak myself what are we doing here” he sais “and I feel like we should just pack our bags and go home”.

Eid

I really feel good in Afghanistan, people are nice and easy. Walking around Kabul often happened that the owner of a shop invite you for a tea. They don’t mind much if you don’t buy anything, they just like to talk. I don’t know how to say thanks. So I take a picture and then I give it to them. I bought a Polaroid camera. Here people (not women obviously) love to have their picture taken. So I’m a goddam photographer and I give you a picture. It cost me just one dollar to make a new friend.
I was this reformatory in Herat. The children didn’t want me to take pictures of them. They were playing of course, but the question was clear: what are we getting back? So, here we are, my Polaroid camera make a picture for you and I will get some pictures for me.
Afghans are really sweet, I constantly run around and they keep looking at me like: “where are you running? sit with me, have a tea, lets talk”. It seems to me that for them, the prototype of the wise man is somebody who is just sitting all day, who have a squad of assistant that do everything for him, and he just need to use his wisdom to carry on his business. In fact their favorite place is the market. If you are a stall owner you basically sit, have a tea with customers, listen to stories of children and weddings and wars and then sometime you sell something, or you send a boy to get more tea for you and your guests.
In the last days I have been at odds with this over-relaxed way of living. I don’t have many days left in the country and what happened is EID. This is a really important religious holiday for Islam. Basically they are celebrating the prophet Ibrahim, God asked hid to kill his son Ismael as a proof of his faith but at the last minute, change his mind and ask hit to kill a lamb instead. So what happened here is that everybody kills a sheep or a cow or whatever they have. But my problem was that they also not work for 4 days and most of them keep it long to more than a week. So the city was completely paralised, nothing to photograph, and I of course run out of gas for the heating system. But luckily I found something to keep me busy: the biggest cold in years, that keep me home for 4 days. Still many people are on holiday: back to their remote villages for the poor, outside the country in India or Dubai for the rich. So I’m desperately trying to meet people for the two stories I’m still working on, but it’s a real struggle.
As for the cold I’m getting better, also thank to guy in the pictures above. Today I walked in the pharmacy and there was this 8 old year boy working there, alone. I was looking around in search of his father or an older bother and then he explained me (through my driver) that he was alone there and he asked what was wrong with me. So if the prescription of the little pharmacists work I’ll be fine in a couple of days. Many westerners I met buy their medicine abroad, and they don’t trust the locals. I don’t know, the little guy seems cool.
It’s hard to be a children in a country like Afghanistan. In every shop or stall, you find a child, working from early in the morning, sometimes along with an adult, but most of the time alone. In this country you work hard when you are young, as long as you don’t have children on your own, and you can have them make the job for you. I mean, it’s normal that an adult help his own family, but here you become an adult when you are just 7.
If their family run some kind of business they work there. Some of the working children in Kabul are from really poor family or are refugees escaping the war in the south and the east. They beg or sell little goods or clean shoes. And they usually work all day and make 2$ at the most. Some of them are the only male left in the family so the only one allowed to work outside the house.
And, I forgot, there is no city power, that means after 5pm I live in complete darkness, I cook using a penlight in the back of my lighter, and I go to my neighbours to charge my laptop. That’s cool, the real war photographer struggle I was dreaming about. ☺

Obama gave tonight his speech on the future of the american strategy in Afghanistan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/asia/02prexy.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
here you can find some hints about why it will be really hard to reach the quick solution in Afghanistan he outlined:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Americans-Are-Deeply-Invol-by-Glen-Ford-091129-86.html

God

Herat

Here in Afghanistan often happened to see people praying. Sunni Muslims are supposed to pray 5 times a day at certain times.  The first pray is around 5 in the morning and if you wake up early you can hear the call of the muezzins all around Kabul. This is the better time to hear it, the city is still silent, the air is filled with these chants and the sun is rising.

5 times a day is quite a lot, it’s more or less every 3 or 4 hours. It’s sounds to me like you are trying to keep something in mind, a practise aimed at keeping your relation with god in every part of your day.

I’m not much interested in a super powerful god somewhere out there, and even less in our Christian big father that judge our behaviours.

But I’m intrigued by this obstinate practise of the Muslims. I often found myself thinking I should do something to remind to myself what really matters in life. It often happened that we get lost, and spend too much energy in silly things.

Let’s forget about what kind of god they are praying to and just focus on the practise. If you would pray 5 time a day, what would you focus on? I mean, let’s forget the word “pray” (that implies talking to somebody more cool and smart than you) and use instead meditation or concentration, or just “taking 5 minutes to think about who you are, what you really want to do and what are you doing”. This sounds interesting.

The relation between the Afghans and their religion is not so simple and as in many other Muslims states, is mixed with lots of hypocrisy. The social standards require you not just to follow some rules, but to believe and love god, or at least to show you do so. Once, in Teheran, an Iranian friend told me: “Only in Europe people can be real Muslims”. Yes, it sound wired, she meant to say that only in a country where you choose a religion you can really make it your own.

Afghans like to show they are wise and religious but it’s clear that many of their behaviours can’t be called like that. But Muslim countries still have a big appeal on me. Maybe is just the idea of thinking about your life as aimed at something deeper.

There always been an inner relation between artist and spirituality. In my notebook I wrote a little list of warnings. I have to focus more on working on a story (than taking pictures randomly at whatever I like), to improve the photoshop post-production of my pictures, to set and fulfil deadlines. Then I added a warning that reads “God”.

I didn’t mean anything religious by that. It was to remember not to look just for a good image but for something that mean more.

The muezzin is calling again… today I have a new city to explore: Herat, the city of poets.

Guns

Maidan Shar – Wardak province

Maidan Shar, 45 minutes drive from Kabul, is the capital of Wardak Province. This place has been in the news many times for attacks to western soldiers. Various armed groups are active in this province. We usually just call them all Talibans, but the reality is obviously more complex than that.

I came here with an Afghan journalist. She introduced me to the governor and then we made two different trips to this province with him.

The first day was really frustrating. Security is critical here, and we are allowed to drive just around the governor residence compound. We walk to the main street of Maidan Shar to a tiny group of shops they call “market”. We drive to the nearest hill to have a view of the valley. From here we can see different villages but it’s impossible to go there, basically because Talibans live there. I struggle to take some pictures, basically of walls, shops and children, not much more.

The governor is being helpful with us. He leave us attend a meeting with a US official and some guys from the state department.

The governor and a mullah are working to establish e militia of locals to patrol the villages. Apparently they are doing a good job, some of them were Taliban before. We decide to work on this story. This mullah, aka “Mullah Loudspeaker” is impressively progressive. He’s working with the Afghan government and is already been threatened by the Taliban several times for what he’s doing.

On the second day he drives us to a couple of military post close by, we interview them and I take some pictures. For me the ideal thing would have been to spend some time with them, but I couldn’t, too dangerous, all I have is just couple of hours.

Some days later we come back to Wardak to try to meet the guys that where fighting with the Taliban before. To meet them we need to go more further outside the provincial capital. In the morning there is a brief discussion with the governor to decide if it’s safe to go there. We decide to go, he gives us 3 police car with a lot of heavily armed guys on it.

After the last check-point in the “safe” area we see holes on the road caused ieds (improvised explosive devices), and wrecked trucks abandoned on the side of the road.

There are many long convoys of trucks; this road is an important supply route, and often a target. Being on a police car on this road doesn’t make me feel really safe.

There are guns everywhere, everybody seems to have one.

We arrive safe to the militia post. We interview the guys. I start taking some pictures, but always in the same small room.

I need to see them at work, patrolling in the villages, without Police. I sit in the back of the pick up with them, and we go, everything look more relaxed now, they joke with each other and are very nice to me. We go into a village; it’s beautiful to be able to see these places, there is no other way to get here.

Everything is really fast, I shoot whatever I can. And then we are already on our way back, hope to sell this story, I risked my life to shoot it.

Carpets

Kabul

So, after the election process faded, and a new president where elected on the base of a severe ridden election, I had some days to reorganize my goals in Kabul.

I met this guy one night, he’s designing and producing carpets. The interesting thing is that the carpets have modern designs. Produced in the traditional way in the north of Afghanistan, the designs are similar to a modern painting.

This guy has been exhibiting his carpets at the Venice’s Biennale as pieces of art and his work is well known.

He need to make a catalogue of the new collection and he’s willing to pay me for that. I got 500$ from this. Four days of really hard work for the 20 pages long catalogue. So in 4 days I took all the pictures and design all the catalogue, tomorrow he’s flying to Dubai to print it.  In Italy you would probably be paid 5 times this rate to do something like that. But for me is just a way to try to recover to cost of my trip here. I will never pay back the costs of this trip just selling the stories I’m working on, and I like this guy and I respect him as an artist. His carpets costs around 1600$ dollars and I know I didn’t make a great bargain. Getting some money out of my photography is not something that happened often to me and when it comes is always really, really rewarding. I remember the first time I get to paid a meal with photography (I was photographing warehouses for a building company), it was really cool.

Of course this is not what I want to do, I would like to live on documentary photography, but anyway you feel that you are paid for your work and that is great.

So, cool, I did the whole way from London to Kabul to become an advertising photographer here. We have been shooting in a new gallery he’s building in Shar-e-naw (an area of the city where most of the foreigners live). The project is interesting. He built everything form scratches using traditional Afghan raw bricks, wood and mud. But of course there is a contemporary mood in the whole thing.

I shoot the carpets alone and then on location. It takes a lot of Photoshop, I don’t have flash lights so we work according to the sun. But the catalogue look nice at the end and I’m quite proud of it.

During the shooting we become friend and he tells more about him. He lived in New York for several years. He had a carpets shop in Soho. His house, here in Kabul, has a garden as big as football field. You soon understand why all this Afghans are back here. They can live like kings. He’s not really one of the new rich, his more an artist of well off origins. But he explains me more about what is going on here.

Around 2002, after the American invasion the security wasn’t an issue as now. And life was easy in the capital. The international aid organizations arrived here together with soldiers and bureaucrats. All these people needed beautiful houses to live during their long missions in a “war zone”. So the real estate market exploded and who owned land in the right areas became millionaires overnight.

A US paid consultant or an international aid worker get from 100 to 300 thousands dollar a year. And they have lots of money to spend for their accommodation. So the average Afghans (half of it live on 45 cents a day) have to move to make space to the aid workers. And not just for them, but also for the old warlords that got the money first form the CIA and then from the state building programs of international donors. And more there are the new rich, involved in the corruption all aver the Afghan society. They live in huge chick houses surrounded by heavily armed private contractors.

The real estate market in Kabul is really interesting. In the house where I live in Kabul my hosts pay 1500$ a month for rent, more than my rent in London. And if you go to a supermarket for foreigners here you have prizes that are again higher than Tesco in London.

We allegedly brought democracy in this country but a dangerous growing gap between rich and poor came with it.

The practise

Kabul

Many time I feel that my pictures are too cold and don’t get enough connection, atmosphere end empathy with the people. I don’t really know how to get there. Practicing photography is the only solution. I don’t want to be too concerned about the pictures at the moment. I want to focus on the story and leave the pictures come to me. I think the only way to have pictures more connected to the people is trying to be more open to the people themselves, leave them into me. Is not easy, I used to be closed, but I feel I’m working on it, trying to break down all my walls.

I spend my day working on the rebus. An image is a collection of elements and you need to organize it in a clever way. Many times you just try to keep it simple. The best solutions actually are the clever and simple ones. Sometimes I would like them to be complicated castles of plans, faces, shadows and lights, but the pictures that have always struck me are simple. When you try to be complicated you can easily fall in empty technicality.

This is the ongoing struggle that I feel. If I try to organize all the elements in a simple way often I feel I’m not saying anything. If I try to be free from any scheme I get wrong pictures. But what does wrong mean?

Maybe with the practise I will get to the point where the process of building an image will be easier and I will be able to fly into a solo like a jazz player. At the moment it’s not like that, I still struggling with scales. So practise is the only solution, my beloved Hayley taught me that, and many other things, I promised that I will quote her every time I use a thought that belongs to her.

There is sure not a lack of practise in these days for me. I photograph politicians, markets and refugee camps, every kind of situations and peoples.

I try to write often, not only these posts but also a sort of diary, 3 pages every day. This is helping me to stay connected to reality and time. I know it sound silly to say it but I always struggle to have a deep connection with reality and time. I thing this happened to most of us. In many situations we are not completely connected to what are we living in the moment. We are concerned about what we have to do, or our frustrations, fears our projects. We are always in the future or in the past. And the present is important in photography. Your camera will record what is in the frame now, not tomorrow or yesterday. To have a free mind is important, you need to feel the actual situation and be able to tell it in a picture. How many time I’m taking a picture but I’m not really looking into the camera, not deep enough, many details are lost. I’m not talking just about what is and what is not in the picture, but more about what I am saying with it.

Some days ago I bought a Polaroid camera. I took a picture of the curtains of my house, I’m really proud of that picture, it doesn’t say much about Afghanistan, but there is a dark feeling in it that I love.

All these thoughts are here but not when I photograph, these thoughts are in me, but I try to write them down and leave them here, I’m not thinking about this when I photograph.

The real good pictures come when you are distracted, when you are playing, when you stop taking all this so serious.

All images are built around a series of schemes that all photographer use. But there is something deeper I’m looking for. Something more intimate, something that talk about my relation with that place or that person. There are not general rules to get there.

Larry

Kabul

Some days ago Abdallah Abdallah announced his decision of pulling out from the second round of the presidential elections. So the circus of reporter, photographers and camera guys gathered at his mansion for a press conference.

The good think about this usually really boring and not-so-photogenic event was meeting Larry. Larry Towel is one of the most intense photographers I know. His work is simple, straight to the point, but also lyrics and imaginative as a child drawing can be.

Larry doesn’t give a shit about publishing, ha makes books, he came to Afghanistan with his own money and he just shoot film (his represented by Magnum Photos and you can find everything on their website).

In this awful environment of news makers, producers of news that last one hour I was really glad to meet an artist.

Larry is the photographer most of us would like to be.

Every day life

Kabul

Usually I wake up at 6 in morning. The light here is beautiful in the first hours of the day but around 10am is already too strong. At the moment I’m working on the election, on the street children and also taking general pictures of this amazing city. Toward the end of the morning I come back home and I make phone calls, read mails and than out again for the nice light of the afternoon. At 5:30pm is dark and the day is over. I eat, I write, I look at the pictures of the day and I try to organize the ideas. At 10pm I’m exhausted.

In Afghanistan Friday is holiday and the rest of the week is working days. So Thursday night is when the westerner parties are. Last Wednesday I’ve been to this place called Atmosphere and I met some Italian ngo workers. That place is pretty cool. There are armed guards outside (as every place for foreigners here) than a guy that checks you through a little hole in a metal door. You enter a concrete room where he checks you bag and then another guy look at you through another metal door. Then you enter a beautiful garden and then a French restaurant, with prices that are probably higher than many places in Paris. But then the cool part is over, is like being everywhere else in the west. Basically people come here to flirt and get drunk. You can meet really unusual people in places like that. I’ve seen similar bar in Beirut and Jerusalem: ngo workers, private contractors, journalist, and others with unclear positions. But at the moment I’m too focussed on my work to find all this interesting, and I don’t have time and money to waist in alcohol.

The situation is pretty tense in these days before the second round of the elections. But the Afghans keep their own routine and being outside with them gives a sense of security. Many foreigners here, who works for ngos or international organizations have really restrictive security rules, that makes harder for them to relate to the every day life of ordinary afghans. I feel glad to have a relation with the population, Afghan are sweet, joyful, really friendly and have no problem to be photograph.

Yesterday there was an incident in a UN guesthouse nearby at around 6am. I wake up with the gunfire, and I spent the rest of the morning wondering if it was worth to go and photograph. But at the end I didn’t. I’m not here to photograph news and I don’t want to risk too much until I know my way around.

It was a good decision. It’s important to go only when you feel safe. I arrived too little ago to play the war photographer.

Last year I photographed the attacks at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. I was really lucky, my hotel was nearby and I literally walk there before the police can close the area. I get some nice pictures and I published it. But now I realize how the month I spent in Mumbai before the attacks was important that night. I knew my way around, I have walked a lot nearby, I knew every street and I felt safe. Here in Kabul is different. At night nobody walk around, neither the Afghans. It’s not unusual to hear gunshots and there is no city lights. Driving in Kabul at night is an experience. Everything is dark, you have only the light from other cars faded by the dust, the dust is everywhere. Actually people cover their faces with scarves in Afghanistan more because of the dust than for jihad… ah.. as I’m writing the roof is moving… at first I thing somebody is walking on the roof… I turn of the lights off… but then al the house is shaking, it’s an earthquake. It’s the second one since I’ve been here, always at night. Last time was more powerful, 4 at the night. I wake up and I didn’t know what to do, it didn’t seems powerful enough to destroy the house. It was really long 30-40 seconds. But then stopped and I went back to bed. Now I remember, the terrible earthquake in Pakistan two years ago, and it’s really close from here.

For the election I’m photographing billboards around the city, old ones as nobody made news ones for the second round. I also photograph Abdallah Abdallah, one of the candidates. But there is not much else to photograph.

But anyway this place is magic, it’s really helping my photography. I feel more relaxed. I just go out every morning and try to do my best. This is all that counts. I’m really glad I’m here. Something is happening inside me. I don’t know if I am a good photographer but this is not important. What matters is doing it without fears of not being enough. Just doing it, showing up every morning and pushing. At the moment I’m more focussed on trying to give my best and working than judging if I’m doing a good job.

Access

Dubai

The actual creative process is hard. It does not come easy and fluid. I spend most of the time pushing, and pushing; only sometimes I get some comfortable downward slopes. Taking pictures can be a painful process. This is my point of view. Maybe for others it’s easier, I hope this kind of photographers exists.

I’m going through an ocean of shit, a lot of it, many and many ugly pictures and just sometimes I find something interesting.  The only way is keep pushing, and sometimes you get to a brief beautiful moment of excitement. It’s both a physical and a mental stress.

Here in Dubai you have to wake up at 6 and walk around while the temperature is not too hot. At 11 in the morning the sun is already dangerous, you can’t venture out of the shade. You need to wait till 3 or 4 in the afternoon to get a little better light, the sun start going down and for a couple of hours you have something between the fierce light of the day and the darkness.

It’s funny, I was thinking about reaching a peaceful state of mind one day, a way of working that could just flow, but on the other hand, the fact that you are exhausted is a way to know that you are actually doing something.

There are no big steps in real life; there are just a sequence of little battles that you can win of loose. The only way I found is to try to win little battles just more often. Walking up early in the morning, get a single good picture, deal with people.

The relation with the people I photograph is a sensitive issue for me. Especially in situations like street photography where it’s not immediately clear why you are photographing. I always have some trouble with this and I think I still have a long way to go before solving it.

After I found my idea for “The Story” I had to get the access I need, to take the pictures. So that was the problem, I found the story here but not the way to get it done. Not being able to talk the language is not helpful. But the war is not over yet. I will be here again on my way home and maybe I will get it done.

Tomorrow I will fly to Kabul, a different war is being fought there.