A visual expedition to the Land of Secrets

News stories — like fashion trends — come and go, pursuing periodic phases of interest, and responding to market logics that are often obscure and incomprehensible to the average consumer. They present scandal, spectacle, morbid curiosity, adrenalin and a desire to get away from the boredom of daily routines.

Afghanistan is one of the features of this accustomed landscape: the story of a war apparently won years and years ago that however continues to occasionally bounce back onto our television screens and seems to be never ending. The number of deaths, road ambushes and attempted suicides perhaps raise an eyebrow but have lost the sensational aspect that keeps interest alive in a sustained fashion over a long period. In 2011, the news linked to Afghanistan accounted for about two percent of the entire production of information in the US. Surprisingly little for a country that has 68,000 soldiers spread over the territory and has set aside 1,300,000 euro for the Post Operation Emergency Relief Fund, the human aid that follows military operations. With the prospect of American troops being withdrawn in January 2014 and the plan to reduce military presence to around 10,000, there is a risk that the debate linked to Afghanistan will gradually disappear from the public arena, becoming relegated to discussion within specialist circles. A story that is over as far as public opinion is concerned, an ancient tragedy, an episode that has been moved from the present and placed in the archives.

In order to counter the risk of this kind of occurrence, Luke Mogelson (Editor), Marcos Barbery (Publisher) and Pieter Ten Hoopen (Photo Editor) have set up Razistan, a collective of Afghan and international photographers (Fardin Waezi, Javier Manzano, Joel van Houdt, John Wendle, Jonathan Saruk, Lorenzo Tugnoli, Mikhail Galustov, Sandra Calligaro, and Pieter ten Hoopen) who intend to keep interest in the country alive, making a contribution towards restoring the complexity of a context that is often the victim of heavy simplification at both a visual and conceptual level. In Dari, the language spoken by the majority of the population, Razistan means Land of Secrets, a name that points to a desire to investigate the multiple aspects of everyday life in Afghanistan outside of the clichés and stereotypes.

Over thirty years of invasion, occupation, civil war and rebellion have scarred the country deeply. Here, there is a sense of instability that is often paralysing, values of trust and solidarity are undermined right down to the roots, and a painful chain of unresolved issues and vendettas that are both personal and ethnic. The textual and visual narratives linked to years of war that are as long as they are multi-faceted have often reduced the story down to simple dichotomies: the winners and the defeated, victims and aggressors, Mujahedin and Taleban, the civilian and military population, creating a trivialised and simplified picture of reality. The Razistan collective of photographers aims to break down these dualities and present itself as a platform that intends to both reveal and transcend the conflict: exploring Afghanistan beyond the photo-reportage of war paying particular attention to those who are the real protagonists in the conflict: people and territory. The aim of the collective is to create a space in which the photographers can explore and recount stories and situations outside of the requests of photo-editors and daily newssheets, in such a way overturning the dynamics of producing information through images. Razistan presents itself as a proactive force, that offers new perspectives and proposes points of view rather than responding to commissions, audience statistics and stories prefabricated in news-rooms that are thousands of miles away.

One of the great assets of Razistan is in the variety of voices and views that are offered by its photographers: journalists that put forward a multiplicity of approaches and interests in such a way as to do justice to the complexity of Afghanistan today. The themes exposed by the collective founded in Kabul in 2012 demonstrate a deep-rooted and intimate understanding of the territory. Pictures by Sandra Calligaro reveal the growth of the middle-class and the impact that this has on the current phase of urban expansion; John Wendle's explore the controversies linked to the training programme for the Afghan local police on the part of the Americans and British. Jonathan Saruk describes the passion for cinema that has survived despite the restrictions imposed by the Taliban and the danger of bombs; Lorenzo Tugnoli, with his black and white photographs shot using film, show an aspect of Afghanistan that is often forgotten: the normality of everyday life in a mountain village where the perception of geopolitical transition is shaped by the cycles of nature and the need to survive. From accounts of the regular administration of first aid in a country at war to difficult negotiations with successive waves of uprisings and warlords, the work of Razistan is a valuable key to accessing the unexplored aspects of the "Land of Secrets". Francesca Recchia (@kiccovich)