BLANC, Jean Charles - Radio Kabul

"The invasion of Afghanistan by the United States as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 suddenly catapulted the country onto the international political scene. The images that have entered daily people's living rooms continue to shape our vision of the region.

In 1963, French photographer Jean Charles BLANC, together with two friends, set out for France from India.

The three friends drove the entire route by car and also crossed Afghanistan. What they discovered was an exotic, unknown piece of earth, an archaic world with a gently budding modern age - far from the turmoil, powers, political upheavals and wars that were to haunt the country in the coming decades.

Jean Charles BLANC returned in 1972, this time for several months. He visited villages and towns, theatrical performances, bars and markets, portrayed people and landscapes alike.

Today, more than 40 years after its creation, Blanc's black-and-white shots are evidence of a lost world: the images appear strangely familiar to western viewers and are at the same time disturbingly different from what we generally think of Afghanistan. Blanc shows us enchanted places of longing, untouched landscapes, touching portraits and intimate moments of a country and its inhabitants, whose hopeful view of the future was brutally destroyed shortly afterwards." (publisher's note, © Kettler Verlag, 2017)