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- A carefree photographic exploration of Afghanistan: a country
that was soon to be torn apart by warfare - Haunting pictures of
landscapes and people, now irrevocably changed Imagine Afghanistan
prior to the terror. In 1963, Blanc set out for India by car,
travelling with two friends. One of the many countries they crossed
was Afghanistan: an exotic, unfamiliar land which they began to
explore. Visiting villages, towns, theatres, bars and markets,
Blanc portrayed people and landscapes in equal measure. His
black-and-white photographs bear testimony to a world that has long
ceased to exist. To someone from the Western world, the pictures
seem curiously familiar yet disturbingly different from everything
we generally think of in relation to Afghanistan. Blanc shows
removed dream places, pristine landscapes, moving portraits and
intimate moments. His photography is all the more potent in
hindsight, as we know the country and its people he depicts had
their hopes for the future cruelly dashed only a short while later.
A young woman prays at her husband's bedside as he lies in a coma
with a bullet in his neck. From outside come the sounds of tanks,
gunshots, screaming and, most terrifying of all, silence. Inside,
her two frightened daughters call to her from the hallway. As she
tries to keep her husband alive, the woman rages against men, war,
culture, God. Even as her mind appears to unravel, she becomes
intensely clear-sighted. Now is her chance - her first ever - to
speak without being censored. Her husband's body reminds her of the
legend of the patience stone, a stone that hears all confessions
until it explodes, and finally, spurred to new heights of daring,
she spills out her most explosive secret.
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