Eye do declare
This article on finding the Afghan woman who graced the covers of National Geographic in 1985 gets at so much of the weirdness the National Geographic legacy.
She didn’t want her picture taken, yet her image has become emblematic of ethnic conflict. Her personal story unknown, and unimportant.
Even now, when the magazine goes back to try to fill in the story, she cannot speak it. It’s filled in by her brother.
She longs for the order of the Taliban days, even as she stands in for its wrongs to Western eyes.
It’s such an amazing example of orientalism, and how it’s still part of us.
Despite that, the image is arresting, and knowing her story is fascinating. I long to be fascinated, to fill in abstracts with knowing, even as my knowledge is invasive of her dignity.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse humanizing this image, since our attempt to fill in a story only emphases the gap between our framework and the possibility of knowing. The story itself breaks down into a tally of how she spends her days; her asthma; her timeline. Is that humanizing? Or is it the eyes?
