The Old Road leading to the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. This road was the scene of heavy fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance soldiers from 1995 to November 2001.

An old truck races north on the Old Road from Kabul to the Panjshir Valley through a heavily landmined area.

Northern Alliance soldiers and T54 tanks retreat from heavy fighting against Taliban forces at Maidan Shah, south of Kabul, in Wardak provice

The Old Road from Kabul north to the Panjshir Valley. This road was the scene of heavy fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance soldiers from 1995 to November 2001.

Cyclists selling balloons in one of the destroyed areas of Kabul. During the Taliban regime balloons were banned.

Afghanistan

Like several other Englishmen of my age, I was drawn to Afghanistan like a moth to a distant flame. I have photographed the conflict there it as it evolved from Soviet occupation to an American occupation via a civil war between competing political ideologies and tribal loyalties and the rise and fall of the Taliban. Few places are as compelling; few are as beautiful and as violent.

I have been fortunate to have traveled and worked in this tortured land for more than 25 years. When I was a schoolboy, few places represented the romantic, literary, and poetic culture of British adventurism and epic failure as well as Afghanistan. When I was discovering global politics as a teenager, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan. Daily newspapers, morning radio, and evening television broadcasts were jammed with tales of Afghan heroism in the face of brutal foreign occupation. Its gravitational pull was profound.

These images were made on one of my last journeys there. On the 13th of September 2001, I flew to Pakistan in transit for Afghanistan on assignment for Newsweek Magazine to cover the US retaliation for the Al Qaeda attacks on New York. I worked in the region, photographing violence and despair until Christmas. During that time, I used a small panoramic camera to make landscapes in Afghanistan, motivated by a desire to escape the violence momentarily rather than to create images for publication. Raised in rural England, I have always found sanctuary in the landscape, even bleak landscapes that wear the scars of violence and war. The rigor of making those pictures kept the darkness out.

Dispatches

Photographs and journals of Gary Knight

Afghanistan