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
