In a thick, illustrated book, Matthieu and Mareile Paley tell the story of their discovery of the Pamir, an isolated region of northeastern Afghanistan, made virtually inaccessible due by rugged geography and diplomatic tensions among China, Pakistan and Tajikistan. These high, round mountains, capped in snow eight months of the year, are covered in summer months by a thick grass that makes the local yaks the plumpest in the region. They are also home to the Kirghiz, a tenacious, nomadic people numbering slightly more than a thousand.

The region’s harsh landscape matches an unsentimental philosophy of life, which the texts in the book, written like a travelogue, relate with the intimacy of a love story. Additional text boxes by the anthropologist Ted Callahan accompanies the raw beauty of the photographs, providing historical information about these isolated people dispersed throughout Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan after the 1978 Marxist coup in Kabul. Their skin, burnt by the climate, is illuminated by their traditional dress, shimmering in this light at the end of the world. The mountains reveal their towering peaks in variations of browns, tans and whites, blending together out of sight in dizzying convolutions. The photographs reflect this near virgin beauty, this hostile environment, the emotions hardened by the climate. With the precision of an explorer, they document the living conditions of this unknown community.

This context gives the images in this book an almost caricatured perfection – not the one of a distant observer but the one of an awoken and alert admirer. Matthieu has traveled to the Afghan Pamir on and off for the past 12 years, speaks Wakhi and likes to occasionally sing along love songs when climbing over high passes. Over the years, he became part of that blue-eyed family he photographed – reflecting his own. Protected from the destructive dictatorship of globalization, even though some tremors can be felt, the Pamir is the timeless Afghanistan of Matthieu and Mareile Paley, far from this agitated country, that wars and medias stubbornly try to define.

Laurence Cornet

« Pamir : Oubliés sur le toit du monde »
Matthieu & Mareile Paley
Text by Roland and Sabrina Michaud
Co-édition La Martiniere / Knesebeck
256 pages, 50 euros