These sisters are using photography to capture the beauty and creativity of Afghan women
Photographers and sisters Manizha and Zahra Abbasi’s lives changed when the Taliban took control in 2021. They left the country, but their desire to create art and tell stories remained. In their own words, their photography shows “the thousands of beauties and merits of women [in Afghanistan].”
What do you do when everything you know and love about your life suddenly disappears? For my sister and I, that’s what happened. We lived in Kabul, Afghanistan all our lives and we loved to create — from painting to photography — it was how we expressed ourselves.
In 2021, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, we moved to Germany and our lives changed forever, but our desire to create and tell stories remained.
Our photographs are about the situation and the pain that Afghan women are going through under Taliban rule and show that there are many people in Afghanistan whose souls are being killed every day. These photos are symbolic of beauty and war. With our photographs, we want to show the bitter realities that the Taliban want to hide — the thousands of beauties and merits of women from the eyes of society.
“I remember my childhood as a girl who always wanted to go inside the small television we had at home and a girl who was busy with imagination to write and paint. ”
Manizha Abbasi, 24, from Afghanistan.
I remember my childhood as a girl who always wanted to go inside the small television we had at home and a girl who was busy with imagination to write and paint.
I remember a story where seven sons of a king left his house because of the birth of their sister. After hearing this story from my grandmother, I spent my days and nights wondering why people around me always told my parents “I wish your children were born boys and not girls!”
I said to myself: what are they afraid of, or if they are not afraid, why am I so much lesser than a son that they wanted me to be a son?
And years of my life were spent fighting with those around me to have the right to choose until I found the path of cinema and my first year at Kabul University. According to my childhood dream, I reached a place where I entered our television but as a journalist in an entertainment and sports program, I was working with Radio Television of Afghanistan before the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
“I decided to depict this forbidden world as much as I could, whether it was through drawing, painting, photography, or filmmaking.”
Zahra Abbasi, 20, from Afghanistan.
I am Zahra Abbasi and I am far from my homeland. I had the chance to be in Afghanistan for seventeen years, and during this time, my love of cycling and art — a forbidden for women in Afghanistan — formed my childhood.
I always asked the question of why art was taken and forbidden from my society. With all the obstacles and problems that existed in my country, I was drawn to art that could depict unheard words and unseen stories which helped me to find the answer to my question.
After the fall of Afghanistan, taking photos of my life behind a chadari during the authoritarian rule of the Taliban gave me a clear answer to the question of why the Taliban and their sympathizers want to distance the Afghan society from art because it gives us meaning and can change the mindset of people. So I decided to depict this forbidden world as much as I could, whether it was through drawing, painting, photography, or filmmaking.
Our hope for the future
We hope to make a clothing design brand where traditional clothes can symbolise history, culture, and identities of our country.
We want to do this because the culture of Afghan clothes has remained unknown. Few people know about the beauty of our homeland, everyone only knows about the wars in Afghanistan.
Most Afghan women love to sew and they have talent in it too but they don't get the chance to show their hidden talent either in their country or abroad.
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