Donation Center

With clarity and a personal perspective, Ahmad Qais Munhazim’s photography project, "Afghanistan through an Afghan’s Eyes: It Is What It Is,” deals with issues of representation, power, the legacy of war, subjectivity, and a nation’s quest to remake itself.

Decades of war have shifted the focus of photography in Afghanistan from capturing the vast landscapes to covering the war and its often tragic aftermath. Since the 1970s, photographs of Afghans and Afghanistan have represented a nation preoccupied with war –- a nation lacking opportunities or resources to represent itself.

Qais, a student at the University of Minnesota through American Councils’ AMZ Renaissance Foundation’s Undergraduate Fellowship Program, would like to illuminate through his own eyes another side of Afghanistan -– its cultures and customs, its landscapes with their deep complexity, contrasts, and beauty, and the power and resilience of its people.

Qais hopes to represent a people and culture in ways that reinforce and deepen our understanding of a land, a culture, and its people. He strives to provide a different challenge to looking and seeing, one that returns to photography’s founding impulses of connecting nations and cultures.

Qais will travel to seven of Afghanistan’s eight regions: Kabul (Central), Balkh (North), Herat (West), Ningarhar (East), Bamyan (Central Highlands), Takhar (Northeast) and Ghazni (Southeast). “In each province, my pictures will focus on four elements: landscape, people, everyday life, and history," Qais says. "The photographs will also depict the geographic, historical, and human distinctions of these provinces. I am aiming for a total of 350 photographs, 50 from each province. I seek to illuminate in a unique manner what an Afghan’s eyes can see."

How Your Donation Helps

We’re asking for your financial support to cover the costs of a camera, travel to seven regions, photography production and framing, and gallery rental for the display at the University of Minnesota’s Art Gallery in September 2010, with a second exhibition planned at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. The cost of the project is $5,730.00, and the University of Minnesota has already committed $1,700.00.