The Beauty and the Peril of Being a Photojournalist in Afghanistan

“You find yourself in the midst of it thinking, ‘God, humans are amazing.'”

Tea over KabulMo Scarpelli

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The image made the pages of newspapers around the globe: a young girl in brilliant green, arms outstretched, mouth open in a scream, surrounded by bodies after a suicide bomb tore through a religious ceremony in Kabul in 2011. It’s an image that, for many in the West, reignited concern over what was taking place in Afghanistan, and it earned the photographer, Massoud Houssaini, a Pulitzer Prize. It also was an image that wouldn’t have been captured under the reign of the Taliban—who outlawed the taking of photos.

Houssaini’s work, along with that of three other photojournalists, is explored in Frame by Frame, a quietly devastating new documentary now making the festival circuit. Directors Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli follow the photojournalists as they document their country’s events in the face of skepticism, censorship, and threats.

Wakil Kohsar Mo Scarpelli

Farzana Wahidy, Houssaini’s wife and one of the only professional female photojournalists in Afghanistan, has the monumental task of documenting the lives of women whose voices are typically silenced—such as a girl who was doused in gasoline by her father-in-law and set alight. Soft-spoken Wakil Kohsar snaps shots from underneath bridges and in the middle of streets where addicts mainline their drugs. Najibullah Musafar, the eldest of the four, now runs a school for aspiring photojournalists in addition to doing his own photography. What they have in common is humble bravery and a deep caring for their subjects. Musafar puts it this way: “If a photojournalist does not have empathy, his photos may be meaningless. If a photojournalist has empathy, he’s able to work on a subject from the bottom of his heart.”

The film, despite Musafar’s poetic musings about the natural beauty of Afghanistan captured in his portrait work, contains a sense of urgency, as though its protagonists are racing toward an uncertain future. Press freedoms have expanded considerably  since the 2001 American invasion, but as the troops withdraw, the threat of a resurgent Taliban looms. In fact, the film opens with Hossaini rushing in to cover a suicide bombing. Arriving on the scene, he warns a colleague, “Be careful that they don’t think we are terrorists.” Soon after, he notes, “These 10 years were a revolution for photography, but I don’t know what will happen now…Government itself is against us sometimes. Taliban will come back somehow, to the government or some part of the country.”

Indeed, the security situation has deteriorated in recent months. “The Taliban has been taking over northern parts of Afghanistan, they’re still very present in the south, and ISIS is in Jalalabad,” Bombach says. In October, the Taliban declared two Afghan TV networks and their entire staffs legitimate military targets. In a recent email responding to questions about Taliban threats, Houssaini wrote simply, “I am not scared.”

His words highlight something else Bombach and Scarpelli reveal, something Westerners miss amid the grisly headlines: the character of Afghan citizens. The film is an ode to a place and a people who fear that the world will forget about them if fundamentalism returns.

Farzana Wahidy Alexandria Bombach

As Bombach and Scarpelli tail their subjects, we get a sense of everyday life in the country: the “smartass” Afghan sense of humor, the tenderness among friends, people holding their chests out of respect when they say hello, men holding hands out of friendship, the vendors who sell “the most amazing fruit,” as Bombach puts it. “People always say there’s something about Afghanistan that gets under your skin.”

Scarpelli adds, “There’s this sense that life is being lived on both ends of a spectrum. Afghans are always talking about flux, but all of it feels normal to them, and you find yourself in the midst of it thinking, ‘God, humans are amazing.'”

Frame by Frame will leave you feeling much the same way.

Najibullah Musafar Alexandria Bombach

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate