GALLERY

9 SIDE | NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE | NE1 3JE | 0191 232 2208 | TUES - SAT: 11AM-5PM | THURS 11AM-7PM | FREE

VEILED REBELLION
The Lives of Women in Afghanistan Lynsey Addario | 18.08.12 - 13.10.12
Lynsey Lynsey Addario made her first trip to Afghanistan in May of 2000 to document the lives of women under the Taliban regime. She returned to Afghanistan two more times before the fall of the Taliban in November 2001. In those days, women were virtually invisible, and the streets were silent: music and entertainment was banned, electricity was scarce, and contact with the outside world was almost non-existent. The only women on the streets were beggars usually widows or wives of disabled men, begging for money to support their families. Most educated women in the cities spent their days squirreled away behind closed doors in family compounds, caring for their children, while rural women continued to work in the fields. On many Fridays, the Taliban performed public executions at the sports stadium the same stadium in which today, both young men and women train in boxing, karate and soccer, and which now also hosts political and social gatherings for men and women alike. Over the last eleven years, Addario has returned to Afghanistan almost every year to photograph the development of life across the country, the ongoing war between NATO troops and Taliban sympathisers and how the war has affected life for civilians and foreign troops. Addario has documented the toll of the war on both sides, spending months on numerous occasions, embedded with American troops from the Korengal Valley in the East, to Helmand province in the South, while making frequent trips to the country to spend time with civilians. Throughout, she has trained a close eye through her lens on womens lives in all arenas of Afghan society: culture, politics, education, employment, and domestic life. Cultural taboos create difficulties in documenting this territory most women need permission from a male relative to be photographed. In 2009, National Geographic magazine commissioned Addario to photograph a comprehensive essay depicting the many facets of womens lives in Afghanistan. The exhibition, Veiled Rebellion, grew out of this assignment.

http://www.lynseyaddario.com