On an intensely emotional journey across Afghanistan from the Iranian to the Chinese border, armed with just a camera and a notebook, Monika Bulaj experiences living, eating and sleeping with the Afghans as she shares the cold and the fatigue, their fears and their laughter. An intimate photographic report on Afghanistan and its people.
This is not a war zone bulletin from the front, it is the story of everyday life in a country where people can still laugh in the face of disaster and have faith in a better future. A collection of Monika Bulaj’s signature photographs illustrate notes from her travel diary as she gains insight to the local people and way of life. Refusing to travel with a military escort, Bulaj journeys through Balkh, Panjshir, Samanghan, Herat, Kabul, Jalalabad, Badakshan and Pamir Khord discovering an almost hidden world, one Europeans once loved, but have now turned their backs on after ten years of military occupation. In these 200 emotionally-charged photographs Monica Bulaj illustrates the daily life of Afghan women and children, their schools, their religion, the cultivation and consumption of opium and the customs of their nomadic people. Visual art from real life.