Thomas Dworzak - Taliban - 2003

In Kandahar, the Pashtun city renowned for its oriental pleasures, where Mullah Omar had his last headquarters, there is a tradition among men of wearing high-heeled sandals and blackened eyes, with beards and fingernails dyed with henna. Apparently, even Taliban fighters were vain, as they liked to be photographed and have their pictures artistically retouched despite the ban. MAGNUM photographer Thomas Dworzak, who was war correspondent for The New Yorker in Afghanistan, discovered these photographs a few days after the Taliban fled Kandahar. They hung in the shop windows of photo studios, right next to pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Lee, and Ahmad Shah Massoud. The backgrounds of the simpler photos are Swiss panoramas. In their hands, the Taliban fighters hold a Kalashnikov or a pot of plastic flowers. Some are alone, others with a friend. Some sit stiffly side by side, others hold hands affectionately. Among them were surely murderers. Yet, they reveal themselves through these images as longing individuals, reminiscent of stars from the silent film era with their blackened eyes. As they fled, they left behind these curious, almost absurd yet touching documents of their presence.