‘Faces of Hope’, a portfolio of humanity, reflects the passage of childhood, it reminds us what is inside us all, it speaks of the fizzing of our blood and the snapping of synapses, and it shows how quickly it is subsumed in an environment set to delete the ‘life force’ within us all.
Seeing Afghanistan through the eyes of its children is like watching tea leaves swirl and twist and disappear down a sinkhole. We are all born equal, some more equal than others of course, but we all exist with possibility in our genes and probability in our futures. In the West these facets are kept alive longer than in many places, but in Afghanistan they are often replaced by a desultory reality before childhood has even skipped into being. The exuberance of a boy is tarnished by the brutality of finding your way in a country of conflict. The innocence of a girl’s life so soon transmutes into fear and oppression, as her world becomes the possession of men. Against a backdrop of ruinous internecine struggles and impoverishing agitation from proxy interests, childhood is a Western whimsy, a fanciful stanza that retains a pulse but no heart beat in this land of blood and dust.