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Return , Afghanistan was published by UNHCR ,Geneva and Aperture New Yok 2004

 

Return , Afghanistan -APERTURE

For more than a quarter of a century, Afghanistan has been ravaged by war, drought, and famine. In this magnificent volume, Afghan-born photographer Zalmaï returns home after twenty-three years in exile to rediscover his homeland at a crucial moment of transition. Working in rich color, and frequently using a panoramic format that embraces the vastness of the sky and sand, Zalmaï immerses us in the ravaged landscape and the bustle of reconstruction. “My project tries to capture the resilience of a people who have rarely known peace, their optimism in the face of overwhelming odds and the very real worry that the country remains on a knife-edge and could easily slip back into a nightmare from which it is still trying to escape.”

 

Hardback
80 four-colo and 5 duotone
128 Pages
11.75" X 8"
ISBN: 1-931788-49-9

 

Eclipse was published by Umbrage, New York 2002

ECLIPSE Umbrage

Zalmaï’s photographs capture the slow, distressing drift of exile and dispossession: spectral figures against a stormy sky, a sheared row of peaks framing a figure like a sacred relic, horizons of men, both of this world and of some timeless land. This is a documentation of a journey through ambiguous territories—from Cuba to India, Mali to the Philippines, Indonesia to Egypt, and a return to Zalmaï’s native Afghanistan—a search for place when one’s own land has been destroyed.
The changing interplay of composition, light, and faces infuse the photographs of Zalmaï in this book, which speaks of transformation and disenfranchisement not just of place but of spirit. Most of all, his work is about the fragility of presence.These are photographs that have been shaped over centuries by ideas carried in men’s souls—not places given by the gods in their placid beauty. Instead, the interiors of these photographs are tangled and jagged, meandering and menacing, of this earth even as they reach to the sky. In the aggregate, they sketch a fragmented story of dispossession, of a voyage of the spirit, of the complex emotions of return. Paris-based Afghan novelist, Atiq Rahimi, contributes an original preface, “The Memory of the Mirror.” In Eclipse, these two voices offer insight into an Afghanistan lost, but not forgotten, and of the enduring legacy of exile.
An exhibition of the work opened at the Musée d’Elysée, Lausanne in Fall 2002, before traveling internationally. Daniel Girardin, Curator of the Museé d’Elyseé, curated the European exhibition and contributes an essay to this volume.

Hardcover with jacket 12 x 8.5 inches 112 pages 70 duotone images ISBN 1-884167-13-6

$45.00 USD

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