Soviet Diving Platform, Kabul, Afghanistan - Limited Edition of 5 Print

I lived in Kabul, Afghanistan for over three years while making the feature documentary, Angels Are Made Of Light. Of all the places I have photographed, Afghanistan was - perhaps surprisingly - one of the most open, once people started to know you. Also, I always worked with very reliable local people as my guides and interpreters, and this was the fundamental point that kept me safe and productive during the years I spent in Afghanistan. I normally like to make documentary photography of people, and this image is a break from that. This diving platform was constructed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, 1980-1988. It is one of the many landmarks they left behind in Kabul. During the Taliban era, after the civil war, the diving platform was used by adherents of the Taliban to execute prisoners by marching them to the top platform and forcing them to dive into the empty pool below. When the United States military arrived in 2001 there was an effort to refurbish the structure, to paint it, and fill the pool. For a time the pool was used by Kabul residents, but when I went to photograph it the pool was already off limits. The city municipality had built a fence around the pool, which was full of water. A solitary guard watched over it, shouldering an AK-47. With the help of a local translator we were able to talk our way into the enclosure just at sunset, where I proceeded to stalk slowly around the diving platform with a wide angle lens, like a director finding his perfect angle. I was looking for the outline of the diving platform to leap out of the viewfinder of my camera and tell me that I had found the right perspective, a kind of golden relationship of forms to capture this strange and somehow otherworldly monument of foreign occupation and past wars. One day perhaps - in some almost graspable future - children will forget its history and think of this spot only as a public pool on a hill in the middle of Kabul. The idea behind all of my work in Afghanistan and the other West Asian countries where I have lived over the past decades has always been to draw to a broader audience toward the beautiful humanity and complexity that I found all around me. The people in these countries have suffered greatly through various wars and conflicts, but their character remains stronger than ever. My films and photographs are love poems to my friends and all the people I met and worked with, who collaborated with me to immortalize them in stills and in motion. Every year a portion of my income goes to support people I have filmed and worked with in the past, their education and the upkeep of their families. This is a museum-sized limited edition print with an edition of only 5 at this large scale. The prints are 61 x 44 inches, which includes a 2-inch white border (three inches at the bottom edge.) The printed image is 56 x 40 inches Signed print (There is no type-written captioning on the limited edition version of this print although captioning is pictured here. It appears only on open-edition prints.) Rendered on museum quality Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, made by a fine art printer using archival inks in the United States. About the paper: Hahnemühle papers are designed for archival storage are acid-free, which makes them highly resistant to ageing. The paper is also lignin-free, which means it should consist of linters or alpha-cellulose. Lignin-free paper does not yellow.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:9 W x 12 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:14.25 W x 17.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.