From Kabul with love

© Sandra Calligaro / item

FROM OCTOBER 8 TO NOVEMBER 10

From Kabul with love
Sandra Calligaro / item
2007 –

‘I arrived in Afghanistan almost by chance when I was 25. I wanted to reconnect with a teenage dream: to be a war correspondent. A journalist friend had just said to me ‘go ahead, Afghanistan’s a good place to start’. I left for a month and travelled the country for the next fifteen years.
My Afghan experience has shaped me and is now an integral part of my identity as a photographer. I was deeply touched by the people I met, and my view of the country is full of tenderness. In the end, I brought back almost no photographs of combat from this great adventure. On the contrary, far from the sensationalism of war, it was the fragility of everyday life that never ceased to fascinate me. In fact, Nan Goldin once said: ‘For me, photography is the opposite of detachment. It’s a way of touching someone – it’s a caress. ’
Alongside my reporting for the press, I feed this constantly evolving body of work. Through the spectrum of ordinary situations, of in-between moments where the tension is tangible and the emotions perceptible – but the conflict rarely visible – I seek to highlight the ambient malaise and latent distress that reign in the country. Over the years, the body of images has painted a portrait of Afghanistan – my own, discreet Afghanistan.
I’ve always known the country to be unstable, mired in a complex conflict. Divided too. The exhibition seeks to highlight the two Afghans who collide: when the Taliban regain power in the summer of 2021, the world of cosmopolitan urbanites suddenly gives way to that of the fighters, whose clandestine existence comes to an end after twenty years of jihad. ’
Sandra Calligaro

Meet Sandra Calligaro on Saturday 12 October at 3.30 pm at her exhibition.

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Les 7 lieux
1, boulevard Fabian Ware

Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 1 pm to 6.30 pm,
Wednesday and Saturday from 10 am to 6.30 pm
and Sunday from 2 pm to 6 pm

Free admission