THE VII FOUNDATION: No Woman’s Land: Behind the Scenes Documenting Women’s Rights in Afghanistan open.substack.com/pub/dispatch...? @theviifoundation.bsky.social @melissacrt.bsky.social #photojournalism #journalism #documentary

Our talk for the VII Foundation on our reportage about Afghan women's lives under the Taliban is now on their new Youtube channel. To (re-)watch it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj3V... @theviifoundation.bsky.social

"an hourlong bombardment of the notorious Evin prison, killed 80 people including prisoners, social workers and children. Israeli officials justified the attack as a blow against “oppression.” HRW and Amnesty International called it a likely war crime." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/w...

How Georgia Went From the Vanguard of Democracy to the Front Lines of Autocracy -- www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/m...

‘After the election commission handed the party its fourth mandate, protesters took to the streets. The authorities responded at first with tear gas and mass detentions, before shifting to cleaner tactics.’ @melissacrt.bsky.social in Georgia, on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/au...

‘The streets of Tbilisi are lined with new cameras. It’s unclear how the algorithm would differentiate between a protester and a passerby: I’ve taken up using side streets to avoid them.’ @melissacrt.bsky.social in Georgia, on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/au...

‘After the election commission handed the party its fourth mandate, protesters took to the streets. The authorities responded at first with tear gas and mass detentions, before shifting to cleaner tactics.’ @melissacrt.bsky.social in Georgia, on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/au...

‪ 'it just eats me alive.’ @melissacrt.bsky.social in Tbilisi for @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/au...

Beijing and Harbin, July 2025

SIGAR's final report is out, concluding that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan failed to achieve its core goal of creating a free, stable, and democratic state, despite over $2 trillion in spending and the loss of 2,459 American lives. www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/...

Ukraine sketchbook from my last trip there, earlier this year

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters

Russia becomes first country to recognise the Taliban www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Last night in Kyiv was hell, explosions lasted several hours. Many times, it felt like this would be our last moments as drones came very close. Fires broke out across the city. Right now we can't go outside, it is unbreathable, the air is filled with smoke & particles. 📸 Ukraine emergency services

I'll be in Sarajevo next week at the wonderful WARM festival to present our project No Woman's Land. More info on the program: warmfoundation.org/festival/ I'll also be at the Festival des Libertés in October in Brussels: www.festivaldeslibertes.be/2025/fase6?e...

Among many other things this is a proliferation nightmare. The lesson learned will be never negotiate with the United States.

The feminist case for treating women’s bodies as instruments for other people’s agendas.

This is a great piece: (can share PDF)

Our project No Woman's Land, documenting Afghan women's lives under the Taliban, and published in the @theguardian.com, won an @amnesty.org International Media Award ! To read the piece: www.theguardian.com/global-devel... @amnestyuk.bsky.social press release: www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas...

Our project No Woman’s Land, documenting the lives of Afghan women under the Taliban, won a World Press Photo!

I wrote a behind-the-scenes account of how Kiana and I made our project No Woman's Land happen, interviewing 100+ women in Afghanistan in 2024. Read it on the VII Foundation website: dispatchesviifoundation.substack.com/p/no-womans-...

The making of a photobook: after three intense days of editing, No Woman’s Land will soon exist on paper. More info + Kickstarter + website coming on 8 March! We’re very keen to make the project accessible and educational, for schools to use, so a cheap version will come too (and the free website)

The recording of our talk on Documenting Women’s Rights in Afghanistan, for the VII Foundation, is now available on their website. In it, we deep dive behind the scenes on working as a duo, ethics, informed consent, security, and more. To watch it: theviifoundation.org/resource/doc...

Les photos de notre projet No Woman’s Land sont en couverture de @lemonde.fr — beau travail que de réussir à parler des droits des femmes afghanes

Women's rights in Afghanistan: ICC requests arrest warrants against Taliban Supreme Leader Akhundzada and Taliban Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, for their responsibility in the crime of persecution on gender grounds. www.icc-cpi.int/news/stateme...

As Afghan women experience ever-worsening oppression at the hands of the Taliban. @zahrajoya.bsky.social meets the activists resisting this ‘gender apartheid’. Check out our latest photostory by @melissacrt.bsky.social & Kiana Hayeri: www.chathamhouse.org/publications...

Fotograaf Kiana Hayeri en journalist Mélissa Cornet wisten tijdens twee bezoeken aan Afghanistan honderd vrouwen en meisjes te spreken. Ze willen laten zien hoe hun leven er nu uitziet. https://buff.ly/4ffazK3

Resistance. Defiance. Despair. Photographer Kiana Hayeri (whose photos feat. in #AnUnfinishedJourney) worked with journalist Melissa Cornet to document the massive changes to Afghan women's lives since the Taliban took power 3 years ago. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

In yet a new ban, Taliban forbid Afghan women from attending training in nursing, midwifery, and other health sectors. Who will take care of the pregnant and sick women and girls in a country where tradition prevents men from doing so?

"Even in provinces where more sympathetic Taliban commanders looked the other way, allowing underground schools to continue [..] women's freedom is still dependent on the decisions & whims of men in power." @melissacrt.bsky.social on erasure of Afghanistan's women www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Saturday au festival du @nouvelobs.bsky.social with Giuliano Da Empoli and Cynthia Fleury: "la démocratie au temps des fake news" and "Avec les femmes d’Afghanistan" with @pierrehaski.bsky.social discussing the great exhibition by Kiana Hayeri and @melissacrt.bsky.social

Exhibition: Afghanistan: No Woman's Land // The exhibition by photographers Kiana Hayeri and Mélissa Cornet is showing briefly in Paris. It highlights the severe restrictions imposed on Afghan women and girls under Taliban rule.

I wrote a slightly more personal essay to accompany Kiana Hayeri's powerful photo essay on Afghan women's lives, for our long-term project No Woman's Land. Here it is: www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Niche post: if you speak Norwegian (!), here's my latest piece in Panorama on how -- in a regime that tries to deny their humanity -- Afghan girls manage to carve moments of joy and sorority, dancing, playing music, or doing henna, behind closed doors. Link: www.panoramanyheter.no/afghanistan-...

Our exhibition with Kiana Hayeri on women's rights in #Afghanistan, No Woman's Land, is open until 18 November at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers in Paris. In the show: photos, sketches, video, as well as collaborative art we made with Afghan teenage girls. Website and book coming in 2025!

Fell in love with (and in) Georgia on my first trip there (1) and (2) in Kezbagi by the Russian border (3) the monument to the Georgia-Russia friendship (4) in the wine region in the West

Also in this issue: Stephen Sedley on treason Rosemary Hill on Japanese folk-craft Mélissa Cornet on women in Afghanistan David Trotter on war films Blake Morrison reads Chigozie Obioma Gavin Francis on medicine shortages . . .

Read my piece in this week's LRB:

1,000 days of Afghan girls barred from going to school, and it continues to feel like a constant scream inside everyone’s head. Each year, no new woman nurse, doctor, midwife, teacher graduates, a ticking bomb for women’s health and education #letherlearn #letafghangirlslearn Photo: Nangarhar 2024

This gets me every time I fly out of Afghanistan #recognition #genderapartheid

A day in Wakhan, Badakhshan, Afghanistan, in May 2024. #mediumformat

I'm looking for archive images of Afghanistan from the 1920s up to the early 2000s. Any idea where to look beyond Wikimedia and ACKU? 🙏

J'ai eu le plaisir de parler au micro de Radio Campus, pour l'émission féministe 'On se lève et on se casse', avec Shakiba Dawod. Une heure pour entrer en détails et en nuances sur la situation des femmes en #Afghanistan, loin du noir et blanc. radiocampusparis.org/emission/v8V-o…

Friends in France: my sketches of travelling around Afghanistan these past few years are exhibited until 30 March in Annecy!

Went to visit the southern province of Zabul in #Afghanistan last month, and got caught in a snowstorm in a normally desertic area. Majestic (but definitely had not packed the right garnments).

Fieldwork in #Afghanistan aka all the best food 🙏🏼🫶🏼 shola, kabuli polow, best bread, best veggies

Bargh e Babur, in Kabul, yesterday. 'Better Kabul without gold than without snow' 🤍❄️

I've been reading this amazing fiction in which we find ways to solve the climate crisis: The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm looking for recommendations of similar climate-related policy fiction and non-fiction books, for a non-engineer reader? 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Latest sketch: Mazar e Sharif mosque, in the north of Afghanistan