Exhibition
Visa pour l'image 2012: Massoud Hossaini
May 1, 2010 – Kabul – Traditional market in the Afghan capital. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
May 7, 2011 – Kabul – An Afghan walks past the ruined Darul Aman palace, once home to King Amanullah who died in exile in 1960. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
January 5, 2008 – Kabul – An Afghan, sheltering from the cold under a blanket, walks past the destroyed remains of a once-proud building. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
March 31, 2010 – Sar Hawza district, Paktita province, Afghanistan – Afghan elders take part in a Shura, a traditional consultative meeting. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
February 21, 2012 – Bagram air base, Afghanistan – Youths throw stones at US soldiers guarding the gates to Bagram air base, a key US military installation in Afghanistan, in protest over an incident in which US forces mistakenly burned copies of the Koran. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
August 19, 2009 – Kabul – An Afghan policeman uses his assault rifle to beat a disabled man outside a building stormed by gunmen. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
March 21, 2010 – Kabul – Police attempt to control a surging crowd trying to enter the Hazrat-i-Ali religious shrine during the new year Nowruz celebrations. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
September 1, 2009 – Kabul – Breaking their fast during the holy month of Ramadan, Afghans eat at roadside stalls once the sun has set. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
December 6, 2011 – Kabul – Tarana Akbari, 10 years old at the time, stands among a jumble of dead relatives in the immediate aftermath of a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite shrine. This photograph won Massoud Hossaini the 2012 Pulitzer prize in the “breaking news” category. The story in Massoud’s own words : "I was just looking at my camera when suddenly there was a big explosion... I turned a bit to the right and I saw the girl. When Tarana saw what had happened to her brother, her cousins, uncles, mother, grandmother, the people around her, she was just shouting.” © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
September 27, 2010 – Kabul – A worker at rest on a hotel rooftop. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
May 1, 2010 – Kabul – Traditional market in the Afghan capital. © AFP / Massoud Hossaini
Afghanistan : seen from the inside
Massoud Hossaini / Agence France Presse
December 6, 2011: the faithful were gathering at the entrance to a Shiite shrine to celebrate Ashura when a bomb exploded, killing 54 and injuring 150. Massoud Hossaini was just a few steps away, covering the event . Massoud, a thirty year-old Afghan photographer, has been reporting on war and developments in his country since 2007. He regularly goes on assignment with foreign troops (American, French and others), and travels to remote villages to show what the war on terror looks like in rural areas of Afghanistan. He also presents his angle on the situation in Kabul.
Massoud Hossaini
I was born in Kabul on Dec. 10th 1981 at a time when the war against the Soviet Red Army was already underway.
Because my father backed the freedom movements, the communist regime jailed him. Our life was in danger and we had to leave the country. I was six months’ old when my family and I left for exile in Iran.
We stopped in Mashhad, a religious city near the Afghan border. Iran at the time was at war with its western neighbor Iraq.
I finished high school in 1996 when the “reformists’ movement” was starting up in Iran and I joined in as a young political activist. After a while, I realized I needed to record ongoing events, as a witness to History, and I chose to do it through photography.
But it was too dangerous for me as a refugee to walk the streets taking pictures, so I decide to look instead at my own society, that of Afghan refugees.
I started documenting the life of refugees in Mashhad and then 9/11 happened and it changed my life.
I returned to Afghanistan in early 2002 and joined Aina org., a cultural center funded by a ‘National Geography’ photographer, Reza Deghati.
I studied and worked alongside photographer Manoocher Deghati and did a lot of traveling.
I joined Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 2007 and started covering the whole war in Afghanistan. I embedded with US troops and other western forces and traveled to remote and poor villages, sharing their everyday life.
I have had two exhibitions in Berlin to depict the life of ordinary Afghans, and intend to continue covering what I consider one the most complicated wars in the world.
Afghanistan : seen from the inside - Massoud Hossaini
From september 1st to september 21st
Eglise des Dominicains
Rue François Rabelais
66000 Perpignan - France
Links
http://www.visapourlimage.com/exhibition/5341.do
http://portfolios.afp.com/photographer/massoud-hossaini.html
http://portfolios.afp.com/
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