2023-09-08 23:12:00
He is warm and enthusiastic. He laughs, listens carefully and wanders off. For the simplicity and didacticism with which Rodrigo Abd Regarding his work, he does not appear to have won two Pulitzer Prizes, one in 2013, for his work on the civil war in Syria; the other this year, for his coverage of the Ukraine war. These days, in Buenos Aires he presents Afghan cameraat the Borges Cultural Center, an expo where it addresses the reality of Afghanistan that knew how to be a protagonist and, once the war ended, was left aside by the media.
With a box camera – those old ones that require a tripod to use, Rodrigo Abd portrayed Afghanistan on two occasions. The first in 2006, the year during which he covered the war; the second, in 2022, when he observed a peace marked by the consequences of war.
—You met two Afghanistans, right?
—Yes, very different. In 2006, I lived there for a year. The frontal war carried out by the United States and the West happened more than anything in Iraq. And at that time, in Afghanistan there had been some progress in terms of women’s rights, it had gone from being a completely rural country to having a slightly more dynamic economy, so there was some optimism. When I returned to Afghanistan in 2010, to cover Obama’s last offensive against the Taliban, I found a different country: very violent, with attacks, car bombs, commando attacks on hotels, journalists had bulletproof vests, NGO workers They couldn’t get out of their bunkers. AND In 2022, I saw the concrete walls as vestiges of what happened. And I found that walled city interesting, trying to repel Taliban attacks, but in a peaceful context. Of course there is some conflict on the border with Pakistan, but it is a totally different context.
—A pacified country, where it is very normal to see weapons everywhere.
—Weapons are everywhere, the Taliban are the ones who now have power. And by showing the weapons, they communicate that they are the army, that they are the police, etc. Also because it is a country whose history allows us to infer that today it is at peace, tomorrow it is not known. But it is a country that happily lives with great tranquility, which was exhausted from always living in conflict. Now they have to suffer a very tough economic crisis, an economy that is very dependent on international aid, and this led to a significant setback in the rights that had been acquired. At this time, women cannot study in high school and have many restrictions on working, among other things.
—In that context, you go to Afghanistan when its name is already associated with the war.
—That was always the idea. Even though the conflict existed before, there were also many people wanting to survive it. And it seemed to me that it was pertinent to present a story of a country that was once forgotten as it was not the focus of war news; and address it with a story that has been so central for a long time, and from a more everyday, more human point of view. Let’s talk about their problems, without falling into the rhetoric of good and bad., because in the middle are the Afghans, who have always been in the middle of conflicts that are not necessarily their own. And the successive invasions of the territory made Afghanistan suffer greatly from the consequences of the war.
—Is your exhibition the other side of the war?
—For me, Kabul, all walled, shows that conflicts persist. Sometimes we feel that conflicts end and that’s it. If tomorrow in Ukraine there is a peace agreement, the consequences of the war will not be erased for decades. I also saw it in Guatemala, which suffered a thirty-six-year civil war, a very bloody one. Afghanistan is a country at peace but it suffers from these effects to this day. basically me I wanted to show that the effects of war last, and that it is important that we journalists return to continue telling. Don’t forget and start from scratch every time a new conflict breaks out.
—And all with the box camera.
—Yes, it was cumbersome and took time, but that was the bet. Load the camera, put a black cloth on it, the tripod, look for people to pose. He was afraid that it would go wrong, because everything is very fragile.
—Was there a basic idea for this last trip?
—The question was: How do we put a country where “nothing happens” on the news map? And yes it happens but for the media, Afghanistan fell off the map. And the objective was to take the time to look for testimonies from the protagonists that would allow the note to be important beyond the situation. For example, that of a Taliban who has half his family dead but today can live in peace, also. Of course, the testimonies are contradictory but they show the complexity of a post-war country that wants to move forward.
—How does your personal life coexist with this job?
—On the day of the inauguration, my daughter had other activities, but I insisted that she come because I wanted her to know what her father does. For me it is important but at the end of the day it is just another job. I don’t want it to be a mystery for her, I want her to know that with her camera I can show her a reality different from hers, and that she can understand that the world is not just her schoolthat Argentina is not the navel of the world, that what happens here also happens in other places.
—What effect would you want your images to have?
—In an increasingly connected world, we live more and more locked up. And I wonder how to make our children understand that it is necessary to break down the walls we create. Soon we will live with only the four of us who understand each other, and I think that the photos have to serve to try to humanize a little a world that proposes dehumanization.
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