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The 2006 'Best Of' Series
For the second annual Best Of issue of the ASMP Bulletin, we selected twenty projects from a field of nearly sixty candidates. It was a tough decision and we thank all those who submitted their work. We hope you will enjoy reading about the projects featured in print and here on the ASMP Web site.
Multimedia documentation in Afghanistan for Bpeace
For the past three years, Paula Lerner has volunteered her time to document programs for the Business Council for Peace (also known as Bpeace, www.bpeace.com), an organization that helps women in regions of conflict build businesses to sustain their families and strengthen their abilities to foster peace. Previously working only with still photography, Lerner recently added sound recording to this project and is now making multi-media work.
Paula Lerner at work in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Najibullah Sedeqe.
All other photos in this article © Paula Lerner.
ASMP: How long have you been in business?
PL: I’ve been in business since 1985.
ASMP: How long have you been an ASMP member?
PL: I have been an ASMP member since 1989.
A driver named Haider negotiates mud and potholes on a Kabul city street. Destroyed infrastructure has left Kabul roads in bad condition and made driving treacherous. With an intermittent electricity supply making most traffic lights non-functional and only a handful of police available to direct traffic, entering an intersection can become a game of chicken not well suited for the faint of heart.
ASMP: What are your photographic specialties?
PL: I photograph people on location for a wide variety of national and international clients.
ASMP: Please summarize the equipment used in this work.
PL: I use Canon digital cameras to shoot and Apple computers to process the work. I am just beginning to move into producing multimedia, and for that I record sound using a Marantz 660 digital recorder and various microphones, with an Olympus 200S digital recorder as a backup. To edit the audio, I use Audacity audio software and produce the show using SoundSlides or work with a producer who uses Flash.
Over ubiquitous cups of Afghan tea, women take a break during a business training seminar sponsored by the Business Council for Peace (Bpeace). Bpeace is a New York-based non-profit that helps women in war-torn regions establish self-sustaining businesses to help foster peace at a grassroots level. Unthinkable under the Taliban, such training will enable these women to grow their businesses and in turn hire more women who will benefit from the stability of a reliable income.
ASMP: How long have you been involved with Bpeace and what is the main goal of this work?
PL: Bpeace is a very new organization (only about three and a half years old), and I have been involved with them for about three years. The goal of the organization is to help women in regions of conflict build businesses to sustain their families and strengthen their abilities to foster peace. Very simply, Bpeace believes more jobs will mean less violence. My contribution is to document Bpeace programs and to use that photographic and audio material for fundraising and educational purposes to promote Bpeace goals.
Women shop at Mandawi Market in Kabul. Although since the fall of the Taliban women are no longer required by law to wear a burqa in public, many still do out of habit or from fear of reprisals from male relatives.
ASMP: Is your work with this group purely a volunteer effort?
PL: With the exception of a full time administrator in New York and two part time staffers in Rwanda and Afghanistan, everyone who works with Bpeace does so on a volunteer basis. I do license some of the photos and multimedia material to publications and third parties, for which I get paid in most instances, but this is secondary and does not cover my out-of-pocket investment or time overhead. At best this partially defrays expenses to do this work.
A young boy with a kite thoughtfully looks up at the sky to see what his next challenge will be. Kite-flying competitions, a time-honored tradition in Afghanistan, were banned during the time of the Taliban. Since the fall of the Taliban this pastime has reappeared with a vengeance.
ASMP: How you account for this work in terms of scheduling and financial planning?
PL: I am committed to my Bpeace work in Afghanistan, and I spend as much time on the Bpeace projects as my schedule permits. I subsidize the work I do for Bpeace with work I do for commercial clients.
With shopping purchases in hand, girls make their way home down a snowy back lane in Kabul. During decades of war with different factions shelling the city, doing something as simple as going out to get food at the market could be deadly. As the city returns to normality, sending children to run errands also becomes normal once again.
ASMP: Does Bpeace have any specific rights to use these images?
PL: Bpeace has the right to use the photos I produce for them in any of their print or electronic publications. Usage by third parties beyond Bpeace gets referred to me and these uses get decided on a case-by-case basis. If it’s for a commercial enterprise or editorial publication, I negotiate an appropriate usage fee directly with the third party.
Bakhtnazira (center), a business and shop owner, stops to visit with her sister and other seamstresses in her workroom in Kabul.
ASMP: You are currently recording audio to accompany your pictures. Do you feel that adding this element has any effect on your image capture?
PL: I was recently inspired to move into multimedia by seeing some powerful multimedia pieces done by friends and colleagues. There is something about storytelling using a combination of still pictures and sound that is much stronger than either one of these elements alone. My most recent trip to Kabul was the first time I brought audio equipment with me to record interviews and ambient sound. The audio makes the pictures come alive and vice versa. Logistically it can be hard to do both audio and stills in the same assignment, simply because it’s hard to juggle the demands of both media. There were times I was recording sound that I felt I was missing good pictures, and times I was taking pictures when I couldn’t help but miss some good ambient sound moments. For this reason it was important to make sure I had enough time to do both. At some points I had a translator/fixer with me who I trained to record audio, and when he could take care of the audio it freed me up to focus on the photography. This helped to alleviate the logistical problems, but it was not always possible to have a helper who could do this.
On a Friday day off, Bakhtnazira relaxes at home with her family. Today she is applying henna to her children’s hands.
ASMP: Does your work with this group have any influence or affect on your commercial work?
PL: When I show my Afghanistan work to my commercial clients, I get a strong, positive response. In some cases it has helped me make contact with paying clients who can hire me to produce work that is in a similar genre. Ideally I would like to be doing more work for humanitarian groups and organizations, and this is the direction in which I find myself moving.
At Habiba’s child-care center in Kabul, after lunch is nap time. In a country where child care for working women is not readily available, Habiba has opened her center in an area where many women with small children work as employees of offices, NGOs, and as home-based workers. These women can go to work knowing that at Habiba’s center their children are safe and well-cared for.
ASMP: Please describe the rapport you have with your subjects. Has this changed over time?
PL: I have made a significant time investment in the relationships I have with my subjects. This has paid off in many ways: On a personal front, I have relationships that are important to both me and my subjects, and because the subjects know me and trust me, they are comfortable with letting me get closer than I otherwise might. They have told me this in so many words. One of the frustrations I have with doing photojournalistic or commercial projects is that it often requires me as a photographer to parachute into someone’s life or into a situation, quickly develop a rapport and then leave. This is part of my job and I have good skills at doing this, but it can be frustrating on a personal level. With the Afghan part of this project, I have spent time over a year and a half, returning again and again. They know I’m in this for the long haul, and the deepened relationship over time has resulted in both valued friendships as well as better pictures and interview material.
By gaslight, Bpeace associate Hamida and her son examine the crafts products that she markets for her family’s livelihood. She commissions more than three dozen women to produce the goods that she sells from her home. Many of her workers are war widows whose sole income is derived from the handicrafts work that Hamida gives them.
ASMP: Have you faced technical or logistical challenges in doing this work?
PL: Simply traveling and working in a place like Afghanistan presents many logistical challenges. As a war-battered country that has little functioning infrastructure, basic things like electricity and running water are often lacking. Most guest houses I stayed in had generators to bridge the electricity gap, but the power could go out at any time and, if I was on a deadline, that was a problem. I brought a traveling surge protector with me so that when the power would go off and then surge to life when the generator kicked in, it wouldn’t fry my computer or camera batteries as they were recharging. There were many other logistical problems that would be too numerous to discuss here.
During rush hour at the end of the day, bikes, pedestrians and all manner of vehicles make their way home through clouds of dust and exhaust that look like pea soup and can feel like a sandstorm. After the Russian invasion and during the Taliban rule, most of the city’s trees were cut down either for firewood or to limit snipers. Between the lack of trees to hold the soil and many unpaved dirt roads kicking up dust, Kabul’s poor air quality causes many Kabulis to suffer from respiratory problems and an ongoing hacking cough.
Beyond technical issues, because of security concerns I just couldn’t safely wander around on my own to photograph like I might in other parts of the world. If I wanted to photograph on the street, it was important to have a good “fixer” with me who could serve as an interpreter and guide as to where it was safe and where it wasn’t. I was lucky to have found a very good person to help me in this regard, and who in addition to everything else, I was able to train to help me record audio. This arrangement worked out quite well.
School girls in headscarves are now a common sight on Kabul streets. During the Taliban regime, girls were prohibited from going to school. With many years of education lost, some are in accelerated programs to help them catch up.
Lastly, learning to record and edit audio presented a whole new medium to master, and multimedia programs like Flash have a learning curve as steep as Photoshop. I took several audio and Flash workshops with other photographers who are now doing multimedia and am still learning the ropes from as many resources as I can.
At a business training seminar in Kabul, Afghan women in the Business Council for Peace program are given calculators and asked to calculate their cost of doing business.
ASMP: Is there any one experience or encounter in this work that you have found to be most significant?
PL: The story that kept emerging again and again from the pictures and audio was how it’s impossible to kill the human spirit. The people I was working with have confronted incredible tragedy and trauma, but they are somehow not defeated by it. They are out there trying to rebuild their lives and their country against all odds and, although they face many struggles, they are succeeding and moving forward. I found this incredibly inspiring and moving and a great motivator to continue doing this work. It has put my life and priorities into perspective.
Children engage in an intense discussion at snack time at Habiba’s Day Care Center in Kabul.
ASMP: Do you feel that this project has made you a stronger or a better photographer?
PL: It would be hard to work on a project like this and not be changed by it. I think it has definitely made me a stronger photographer and taken my work to a new level, and a number of colleagues and clients have commented on this.
I am doing this work as an activist as much as a photographer, documentarian or multimedia producer, and being able to combine these things has been profoundly meaningful and satisfying. I hope to find ways to continue doing this project and related ones.
Teacher Rabia taps a rhythm on a food tray while a girl dances at Bpeace associate Habiba’s Day Care Center in Kabul.