Afghanistan in Four Frames

Curator. San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: City Hall. February - May 2011

Artists: Lynsey Addario, Eros Hoagland, James Lee and Teru Kuwayama

Afghanistan in Four Frames is a groundbreaking and timely exhibition featuring works by four photojournalists who have embedded with various units/forces in Afghanistan over the past five years. Curator Meg Shiffler selected photo essays by four photojournalists who document the current war in Afghanistan from a humanist perspective. The exhibition doesn't linger on the battlefront, but rather focuses on intimate and everyday moments in the lives of both soldiers and civilians. 

San Francisco based photographer/writer and Marine Corps veteran James Lee traveled alongside Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) near the border of Pakistan to create Counter-Narratives, a photo essay depicting a ground-level perspective of ANSF operations far from any US military presence. Another Bay Area photojournalist, Eros Hoagland's Siege Perilous portrays the tension between the western military presence and the local landscape and the people of Afghanistan in the Korengal Valley and Helmand Province. In Women at War, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Lynsey Addario's essay shows women soldiers training and patrolling alongside their male counterpoints, but due to religious customs, the women also perform duties that put them in the unique position of direct contact with civilian women and children. New York based Teru Kuwayama has been photographing in Afghanistan and its surrounding areas for nine years using Holga and Leica film cameras.

This exhibition marks 10 years of war in Afghanistan.