This is a thread about photographer Shah Marai, democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan.
As the Taliban are trying to make everybody forget democracy and women's rights ever existed in Afghanistan, I will take every opportunity to remind everybody that democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan have a long history, and also share Shah Marai's photos. So it will be a long thread.
If you're short on time, after the next post you can hit the eject button before the slideshow begins, ok?
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If you want to cut to the chase, here it is.
Women have had rights and have participated in society and in democracy in Afghanistan for a long time. They first won the right to vote in 1919. That's a year after women in the U.K. and a year before women in the U.S.
The Taliban's brutal repression of women's rights has nothing to do with Islam, traditions or Afghan values. It's misogyny, plain and simple.
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The name Shah Marai is not well known outside photography circles, but if you read any news articles on Afghanistan since 2000, you will have definitely seen his work. He first started taking photographs in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1998. Afghanistan was under Taliban rule and photography was viewed with great suspicion. Photographing living beings, human or animal, was forbidden. Shah Marai would sneak his camera out and try to document what was happening in Kabul at grave risk to himself.
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Shah Marai was very much a press photographer. He covered all the news stories. It was mostly a depressingly regular routine of foreign politician's visits and suicide bombings.
While he took lots of the much needed press shots, when he wanted to, he could take documentary shots that were up there with anything you would find in a Magnum photographers portfolio.
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The first photo I saw that really stopped me in my tracks and made me remember the name Shah Marai was this one from 2009. The Bird Cages at Kabul Market. It's breathtaking. The sunlight breaks through onto the birds in the cages as the old man walks away, to me it encapsulates the whole political landscape of Afghanistan at that time.
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Shah Marai's work helped him support his large extended family, many of whom suffered from a genetic defect that led to blindness. He was always laughing and joking, a kind and generous man who liked to help everybody, he even paid to have a mosque built in his home village.
Shah Marai loved all children, and in 2018 he was completely overjoyed that with the birth of his sixth child, he had finally been blessed with a daughter.
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18 days after the birth of his sixth child, he was at the site of yet another suicide bombing in Kabul, photographing and looking for survivors. It was then that a second suicide bomber detonated their device. Shah Marai died instantly.
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I could talk about Shah Marai, his life, his death, his photographs,his Afghanistan, for hours.
But we're here to talk about what he and I consider to be some of his finest and perhaps most important work. In 2010 Shah Marai travelled all across Afghanistan to photograph boxes. Yes, that's right. Boxes.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes in schools in Afghanistan in 2010
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Shah Marai photographed boxes in government buildings in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of lorries in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of donkeys in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes on the backs of people in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the streets of the city in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the villages of Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried on dusty roads through the countryside of Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried through the desert plains in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes being carried up the mountains in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed boxes in Afghanistan in 2010 everywhere. If there was a box on the move in Afghanistan in 2010, Shah Marai was there, taking photos.
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You might have noticed by now, Shah Marai didn't just take photos of any old boxes in Afghanistan in 2010. (That would be weird!)
These were special boxes. These were ballot boxes. These were the ballot boxes for the 2010 election in Afghanistan.
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What these boxes represented to Shah Marai and all Afghans was democracy, what they had been hoping and longing for all those years. Shah Marai could never put into words what this meant to him, so he put it into pictures. Hundreds of them. You can go through his archive and see just how much work he put into this. It meant so much, to him, and to Afghanistan.
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OK that's more than enough boxes. Luckily for those of you (nearly all of you) who are into boxes, but not THAT many boxes, Shah Marai didn't forget the women of Afghanistan who were also participating in democracy in Afghanistan in 2010. He photographed them too.
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Shah Marai photographed women organizing the elections in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed women queuing up to vote in the elections in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed women voting in the elections in Afghanistan.
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Shah Marai photographed women after they had voted in the elections in Afghanistan in 2010, with their ink stained fingers a sign that they had participated, and the proud hopeful looks on their faces.
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Shah Marai photographed women carefully counting the election results in Afghanistan in 2010
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Shah Marai also photographed the female candidates campaigning in the elections in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai photographed the female election candidates as they encouraged other women to vote in the elections in Afghanistan in 2010.
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Shah Marai also photographed the women who served the Afghan people after having been elected in Afghanistan in 2010.
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