Local photographer captures humanity of Afghanistan

David Bowering supports the troops. That much is obvious. Even if he didn’t state it explicitly then it can be inferred pretty easily after listening to some of his stories from being embedded in Afghanistan as a freelance war photographer.

The St. Albert photographer explained that he had to beg for a few favours and figure out how to pull a few strings to even get on the ground in the Middle East.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he confessed. “It came about in a very specific way. It came about by [me thinking] ‘How do I support my troops?’”

Someone asked him if he actually did feel that sentiment. His only response was in the affirmative but he had to know what lengths he would go to in order to express his support. Kabul is more than 10,000 kilometres away.

“The only way I could think of doing it was through what I do best, which is probably photography,” Bowering said.

Through friends he got in touch with the right people in order to spend four months in Afghanistan. It wasn’t easy to get the okay from those in charge and this gave him further incentive to do a good job. There’s no doubt about the quality of the images: they are compelling in many ways.

Bowering’s show, which opens tomorrow at the Art Gallery of St. Albert, features a diverse selection of blown up images from Kandahar province and the Panjwai district, the area known as the birthplace of the Taliban.

It’s almost like you’re attending two or even three shows at the same time. There is an obvious incongruousness between the aerial shots of scorched deserts and scarred mountains with sand dunes and strange clouds, the action shots of camouflaged and armed soldiers with axes and machine guns, and the tender and introspective images of a selection of Afghani civilians.

Jenny Willson-McGrath, the gallery’s exhibition curator, explained that the gallery originally chose to feature the first and the last but that the soldiers weren’t necessarily going to be in.

“Upon forming the show and talking more with David about his experience, we decided that the military element was pretty strong and pretty important to make it more balanced,” she explained. “The show is a little more than perhaps the jury had intended it to be.”

The aerial photos are somewhat reminiscent of Edward Burtynsky, the photographer who travels the world and captures the beauty and the geometry in some of the unlikeliest of places, like oilfields and tarsands. The civilians are shot with the same kind of humanity as you’d expect from the best National Geographic photographers.

A bearded man kneels in prayer. The facial expressions of a group of five men show a range from despondence to bemusement to fear. A young woman, possibly a girl, covers her face with her head wrap.

Willson-McGrath pointed out one striking image that required closer inspection. A small boy with a muddy face and clothes, holds a handful of ripped paper. His footwear includes one sandal and one blue rubber boot, worn unsettlingly backwards.

“When David started talking about why he was photographing the child, he describes a filthy little boy who doesn’t seem to care how dirty he is. When he was reviewing the pictures, the boot faces a different direction in every photo. It occurs to him that the child only has one foot.”

The action shots have more stories to tell. The show might not be for all viewers, especially since we see the horror on the face of Giles Duley. In February, the British photographer stepped on an improvised explosive device and lost three of his limbs. Bowering was there in the helicopter as Duley was being transported right after the incident. We don’t see much blood but his expression is haunting.

Interestingly, the two still communicate and have a show opening up at the KK Outlet Gallery in London, England tomorrow as well.

For his part, Bowering is pleased with the show, especially since the gallery is making a special exception by opening on Remembrance Day until 2 p.m., after the service at the cenotaph.

“I thought it was a pretty amazing idea,” Bowering said. “I’m probably going to go down there for those couple of hours as well. I think it’s somewhere I want to be.”