In Kabul, the heads of plastic mannequins in shop windows are cut off or covered. Girls are sold in exchange for a well or solar panels; others (sometimes the same girls) brave checkpoints to go to clandestine schools. These are the kinds of realities confronting us in the work of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and French researcher Mélissa Cornet, winners of the Carmignac photojournalism Award.
Between January and May 2024, they met around a hundred Afghan women and girls, documenting their gradual exclusion from all areas of public life (schools, universities, workplaces, public baths and parks, beauty salons) since the Taliban came back to power in August 2021. Until November 18, 2024, their collaborative work, brought together in the “No Woman’s Land” exhibition, can be seen at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers in Paris, and on the docks of the Port Solférino (from October 31 to December 18, 2024). The exhibition will then go on tour, notably to The Hague, at the General Assembly of the Criminal Court.
The two women, who have been working in Afghanistan for a long time, have established a relationship of trust with their subjects that has enabled them to gain access to their intimacy. For example, they have been present at birthday parties in various interiors, where teenage girls transgress the prohibitions on music and dance for a few hours. “Most of the photographs are taken indoors, because this is where they can be themselves the most,” explains Mélissa Cornet. “It was important for us to show the forms of resistance that these spaces of joy constitute, and get away from the narrative of women in burkha begging. These realities exist, of course, but we wanted to give these women respect and dignity, to take photos that make them happy.”
The exhibition’s meticulously designed scenography reflects the spatial segregation suffered by Afghan women. Alice de Bortoli and her collective Ortiche created a set of partitions forming small, semi-enclosed spaces, accessible by lifting a piece of fabric. A few openings open onto large photos of street scenes, putting visitors, for a handful of seconds, in the position of these women who can only see the street from their windows. “We also worked a lot with neon lights, which are very present in the street,” says Kiana Hayeri. “Bringing them indoors to illuminate the women’s faces helped to blur the boundaries, to inscribe them in turn in this forbidden exterior.”
Sketches, photos, video: “No Woman’s Land” varies formats. At the back of the room, large, stretched veils undulate as we pass; majestic views of Afghanistan are printed on them. “We had to climb to the top of a hill to photograph this lake, whose banks – a place for gathering and socializing – we had been forbidden access to”, says Mélissa Cornet in front of one of them. A little before, a video installation on a large screen confronts the testimonies of different generations on their memories of the first Taliban regimes. “And while today’s Taliban are better communicators than they used to be, decisions continue to be taken by an ultra-conservative core: in the end, nothing has changed.”
Moreover, the video echoes the voices on mute faces, as if to better illustrate the law which, since August, has forbidden women to make their voices heard in public. A series of sketches made by the researcher can also be seen, as well as a collaborative art project with a class that has since closed. The photographs show them posing in front of self-painted canvases, which illustrate the setting of their chosen career. The result is overwhelming: “They painted what they dreamed of having, but knew they’d never get here,” sums up Mélissa Cornet.
The inequalities are alarming in every respect, leading Amnesty International to describe the situation as gender apartheid, which could constitute a crime against humanity. When there isn’t enough food for all the children, boys are given priority,” says Shugerfah, a nurse in the malnutrition department of an NGO, whom the duo met. Deprived of access to education, Afghan girls are also forced to attend clandestine schools if they wish to continue their studies.
The stakes are high: if nothing is done, there will soon be no doctors, lawyers, teachers or nurses left. “And in a deeply patriarchal society, where a woman cannot be treated by a man, for example, it will still be women who pay the price,” points out Mélissa Cornet. But the risks are great, and motivation is waning: while 17-year-old Razia continues to go to class (in a wheelchair following the suicide bombing that targeted her school), her little sister, who was 11 at the time of the Taliban takeover, already sees no point in fighting any more.
Kiana Hayeri and Mélissa Cornet also wanted to pay homage to women activists, who fully invest the spaces of the margins. Portraits of journalists are presented, with a strip of light on the women’s faces illustrating their essential role as scouts. The duo also wanted to document the LGBTQIA+ condition, but the danger to the subjects was too great.
The two prizewinners are adamant: this report would not be the same today, when the situation has hardened month by month – the endless list of decrees being irrefutable proof of this evolution. “The Taliban have succeeded in delegating control over women to the men around them,” says Mélissa Cornet. “Through ideology or fear of disobedience, they are the first to impose coercive control. A decree, for example, stipulates that in the event of failure to wear the hijab, it is the chaperone who will be punished.” A measure with a double perverse effect: additional pressure for men, since they are directly at risk… And the ultimate infantilization of women.
With their in-depth knowledge of the country, the two prizewinners traveled to seven different provinces to gain an insight into the disparities in this vast country, which is not limited to its capital. “The south and east are much more conservative, for example: many of the rules now promulgated by the Taliban were already in force there,” explains Mélissa Cornet. In many respects, it is the repercussions of the economic crisis that are sometimes the hardest to deal with on a day-to-day basis: many camps for displaced persons have sprung up since the expulsion from Pakistan of Afghan families who had been living there for years. Forcibly returned to their homeland, these refugees lack everything.
Faced with this general and multi-factorial disaster, the international community is far from being up to the task: freezing aid, lack of effective measures, sanctions that penalize the most vulnerable first… “And today, exhausted by years of recent conflicts, Afghans are above all looking for security; even to get rid of the Taliban, the idea of civil war does not seem for most a desirable outcome”, analyzes Mélissa Cornet. Let’s hope that peaceful change meets with the right conditions.
“No Woman’s Land”, by Mélissa Cornet and Kiana Hayeri, is on show until November 18, 2024 at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers, and from October 31 to December 18, 2024 on the docks of the Port de Solférino, Paris.
Find out more about the Carmignac photojournalism Award here.
