The Well Told Story: Kabul Portraits

Kabul Portraits is an interactive multimedia website that serves to spotlight Afghan cultural producers. The brainchild of Ariel Nasr and Jeremy Mendes, the Kabul Portraits project takes viewers on a photographic and audio journey to tell abbreviated stories about six artists from Kabul, Afghanistan.  While focusing on the challenges these artists face as cultural producers in a “city not normally in the public eye for its arts, but for its problems,” Kabul Portraits also centralizes the nuance and evolution of portraiture across media.

I think the site is effective in its visual appeal, functionality and overall storytelling. I really like the variety in media–take Oren Ambarchi’s looped music, or the overlapping photographs and footage accompanied by text. I also really appreciate the experience I’ve had in stumbling upon this website and getting introduced to Mohammad Akram–a painter who has completely abandoned commercial paints for self-produced paints from stone. Akram says the mud used for paint could be someone’s brother who has become dust, formed into brick, and been used to build houses. In recognizing the uncertain past life of the stones used to produce the paints, Akram points to the way experiences like hearing rockets, bullets, and mortars can be expressed, transferred, and exhibited to form new meaning.