Lorenzo Tugnoli: A Village (Afghanistan)Project overview:There are more than thirty thousand village

Lorenzo Tugnoli: A Village (Afghanistan)Project overview:There are more than thirty thousand villages in Afghanistan. Every village tells a unique and individual story; every village is a microcosmos of relationships, habits, loyalties. The topographic, environmental and demographic diversity makes of Afghanistan an intricate patchwork of ethnic, religious and political affiliations. Yet, rural life all across the country follows the same cycles of nature, and struggles with violence, economic and political instabilities in similar manners. A Village is a personal and political journey in this great complexity. Using an evocative tone and the language of poetry, the project is a long-lasting observation of the rhythms of life in a village in rural Afghanistan. A village that tells its own story, but that also represents a condition and a way of life that is shared by many people and communities all across the country. With the foreboding approach of 2014, there is a general increasing fear for a looming future. A Village intends to explore this phase of transition from an off-centre perspective: it aims at investigating the impact of a momentous political transformation on ordinary people in Afghanistan, whose lives are profoundly disconnected from the decision-making centres of power. A Village is a collaborative project between Lorenzo Tugnoli, a freelance photographer, and Francesca Recchia, an independent researcher and writer. Spanning over the period of one year and four seasons, the research will develop into a book of photographs and words. It will focus on a village in the eastern areas of the country, where there is the highest concentration of Pashtun, the predominant ethnic group of Afghanistan. To this day, Pashtun retain a specific way of life known as Pashtunwali, a code of honour that shapes their mores and perception of the world through the values of hospitality, vengeance, pride and mercy. These will be key entry points for both writing and photography. Tugnoli and Recchia will respectively focus on the patterns of life of the men and the women of the community. The book will have the eyes of men and the voice of women. Readers will see an intimate portrait of the details of men’s lives in rural Afghanistan, while hearing what women have to say about the world around them. The main geopolitical events of 2014 – national elections, the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force – will be at the background of the seasonal activities that characterise rural life, from sowing to harvesting to the long idle winter days, while the shared repertoire of orally transmitted poems and banters will provide the underlying commentary. *I really appreciate that this project starts at a local level and within the lives of every-day people, rather then coming in to accumulate photos that satisfy a set narrative around ‘war’ 'violence’ 'poverty'… anything that seeks to encapsulate what a country is or can be. Here, larger issues and challenges Afghanistan faces are very present and touched on by each photo, but they arise organically within the documentation of the every-day life of a village. The realities of war, armament, the opium trade and poverty are expressed within the everyday business of just 'getting by’: of farming and parenting, repairing roads and rebuilding homes, faith, prayer and learning the Koran…. all the ways people feed and nurture themselves.   -- source link

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