Restaging Afghanistan

Trapped in the Cycle of Conflict Photographies

Bibliographic Data

ID12914573
AuthorsSimon Popple (0000-0002-2997-0348, University of Leeds, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume17
Issue1
Pages50-69
Publication date2024-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17526272.2023.2280871
OpenAlexW4391092175
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited21

Western, especially British interventions in Afghanistan, parallel the long history of photography. This article examines the resulting archive and considers its ongoing influence on the traditions of conflict photography through the concept of the 'Feedback Loop' coined by photographer Tim Hetherington. Hetherington's work is used as a departure point for an examination of the archival legacy of the male-gendered western gaze in ongoing western incursions. It focusses on Hetherington and contemporary practitioners to position and understand a repetitive cycle of photographic witnessing informed by the archive. Its perspective is on western traditions in the context of picturing Afghanistan and explores what underpins such traditions and how contemporary practitioners are rethinking, rememorizing and now restaging Afghanistan as a site of post-imperial 'conflict'. It argues that what Hetherington identified as a 'feedback loop' is part of a much older tradition of picturing conflict and the combatants at its heart

Geography · Archaeological Research and Protection · Global Security and Public Health · History · Turkey's Politics and Society

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