KHALID HADI
(Afghan, b. 1981)
Khalid Hadi was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 1981. His childhood was set against the backdrop of bloody war between the Mujahideen and the Soviet Union, a war which claimed up to two million Afghan lives as well as 15,000 Soviet soldiers.
In 1990 Haji Mullah Akhond, a Mullah in Kandahar, established a foundation to help those who had become victims of the Soviet war in Afghanistan: orphans, disabled Mujahideen fighters, and civilians wounded by land mines and other explosives. Hadi, with assistance from his father, a former general in the Afghan army, was hired by Mullah Akhond to document those who had been wounded. By this time the 11-year old Hadi was an experienced photographer using a handmade wooden box camera, a widely popular tool in Afghanistan for making street portraits for money. Over the course of two years, Hadi would go on to photograph more than 10,000 people who had been wounded while managing the record keeping of those who had received funds from the Saudi-backed foundation.
In 1996 the Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, taking Kandahar as their new capitol. Under the the new regime, Hadi became “official Taliban photographer.” Although the Taliban had banned photography of all living things, they used the medium as a propaganda tool, publishing the completion of public works and construction projects in two magazines published by their Ministry of Culture.
A passionate lover of Pashto music, poetry, and Afghan culture, Hadi’s job with the Taliban was no more than a means to survive. Armed with a press pass, Hadi was able to acquire banned videotapes and music cassettes from the Pakistani border and bring them into the country, where they would secretly be passed from person to person. After the fall of the Taliban, Hadi started a cultural magazine and news agency in Kandahar. He now lives in the United States.
These photographs are from a collection of eighty-three unique gelatin silver prints made from paper negatives between 1992 and 1993.
