Harriet Logan: undercover photos of the lives of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban

Harriet Logan: undercover photos of the lives of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban

09/11/2009

In Remembrance Week and as winter settles on Afghanistan, photo-journalist Harriet Logan’s exhibition at Bedales Gallery is particularly timely and poignant. Last Friday evening a packed audience of students, staff and guests from the local community attended the opening of the exhibition ‘Unveiled’ and an illustrated talk by Harriet, a former Bedales student. Her career took her, for the best part of two decades, into some of the world’s most challenging environments, including war zones in Africa and Europe, but has now moved into advertising and pro bono work for charities such as Save The Children.

‘Unveiled’, showing at Bedales Gallery until 5th December, comprises thirty-one black and white prints of great power, beauty and accomplishment. The hush of concentration on Friday evening as people moved from image to image was caused not just by this but by the intensely human and personal story revealed by each photograph and the accompanying text, often quoting the words of those photographed. Overwhelmingly, there was the sense that this was not a piece of historical documentation but an exhibition alive with immediate contemporary resonances.

Harriet Logan was commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine to visit Kabul in 1997, when it was firmly in the grip of the Taliban who had come to power in 1996. Stories were just beginning to emerge of the extreme impact of this oppressive theocracy, particularly on women. Harriet got permission from the authorities to take photos of war damage but her real agenda was to find women able and willing to take the risk of revealing something of their experience. It was an enterprise fraught with danger for both subjects and photographer and had to be carried out with very considerable nerve and sensitivity.

One photograph is taken from behind the burkha which Harriet was obliged to wear, giving an eerie sense of the partial perspective allowed on what was already a broken and disorienting cityscape. Another street scene is taken through a bullet hole in the wall of a cinema. In another, two women walk towards the camera, fully covered, and in the background the suspicious eyes of a member of the Taliban are seen to be sharply focussed on women and photographer. This photograph and others like it had to be taken covertly, without holding the camera to the eye, and Harriet confessed that many, many of the photographs taken showed nothing more revealing than the ground or the sky. Exposed film had to be concealed and smuggled out of the country.

Personal contact with the women revealed heart-breaking personal stories. Many of these women in Kabul, unlike those in other parts of the country, had lived under far more liberal conditions and had enjoyed education, access to foreign cultural influences and professional opportunities.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, in the wake of 9.11, led to the retreat of the Taliban from Kabul and Harriet Logan was commissioned by a publisher to return to the city in an attempt to contact the women she had photographed in 1997, to document their stories more freely and to record the dramatic change in their lives. Those photographs capture both an enormous sense of relief and release but also the harsh realities of deprivation, with crowds assembled for emergency food distribution. Among the most affecting images are those of girls running freely or walking together in happy groups on their way to re-opened schools, where previously they had to walk alone to secret locations, hiding their books. But as visitors saw even these heart-warming images there was the ever-present sense that this was no simple black and white story. What are the circumstances of those young women now, eight years on, and how are realities of their individual lives now being shaped by the enormous political and other forces at work in their country?

The exhibition is open, free of charge, Mon – Fri 2-5pm and Sat 10am-1pm. Group visits by schools and other organisations can be arranged outside these hours, if more convenient. Please telephone the Gallery on (01730) 711 513 for further details.

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