afghanistan: chronotopia
Simon Norfolk

exhibition venue: City Art Gallery

Afghanistan is unlike Sarajevo or Kigali or any other war-ravaged landscape I have ever photographed. In Kabul in particular, the devastation has a bizarre layering; the different destructive eras lying on top of each other. I was reminded of the story of Schliemann’s discovery of the remains of the classical city of Troy in the 1870s; digging down, he found 9 cities layered upon each other, each one in its turn rebuilt and destroyed. Walking a Kabul street can be like walking through a Museum of the Archaeology of War - different moments of destruction lie like sediment on top of each other. There are places near Bagram Air Base or on The Shomali Plain where the front line has passed back and forth eight or nine times - each leaving a deadly flotsam of destroyed homes and fields seeded with landmines. The landscapes of Afghanistan are the scenes that I knew first from the ‘Illustrated Children’s Bible’ given to me by my parents when I was a child. When David battled Goliath, these mountains and deserts were behind them. When Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, these fauna and flora were over his shoulders.

More accurately, these landscapes are how my childish imagination pictured the Apocalypse or Armageddon; utter destruction on a massive, Babylonian scale bathed in the crystal light of a desert sunrise.

A raft of exhibitions of the work from afghanistan called ‘time|bomb’ will take place in September at Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool); Side Gallery (Newcastle); Hereford Photography Festival; Trace Gallery (Weymouth); Photofusion Gallery (London); The British Council (London); the Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

Biography / curriculum vitae:
Simon was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1963 and educated in England finishing at Oxford and Bristol Universities with a degree in Philosophy and Sociology. After leaving the Documentary Photography course in Newport, South Wales he worked for far-left publications specialising in work on anti-racist activities and fascist groups, in particular the British National Party. In 1994 he gave up photojournalism in favour of landscape photography

His book "For Most Of It I Have No Words" about the landscapes of the places that have seen Genocide was published in 1998 to wide approval including praise from the novelist Anne Michaels and Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The piece was exhibited around the UK including the Imperial War Museum as an Impressions Gallery (York) touring show and in Europe including the influential Nederlands Foto Institut. The work is now a British Council Touring Exhibition travelling to venues as far removed as the Holocaust Museum in Houston and Photosynkyria (Thessaloniki). His piece "Long time, No see" about Native America was shown at Camerawork, San Francisco in 2001 and the current work from Afghanistan has been shown already at pARTs Gallery Minneapolis, The Griffin Center for Photography in Boston and Galerie Martin Kudlek (Cologne).

In 2002, Simon won a Silver Award from the Association of Photographers and his Afghan work won the European Publishing Award meaning the book will appear as a book in September 2002 in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian language editions. In 2001 he won a prestigious World Press Award for his pictures of the "Half a Dozen Photographers" Publications; 1991 "Sharp Voices, Still Lives" Publication; 1992 Digital Photography Magazine "Ground Scans"; 2000 BJP "Ground Scans"; 2001 BJP "M6 Toll Road".

For further information on Simon Norfolk 's work visit this web site: growbag.net/photographers/simonnorfolk/
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