Anonymous Afghan cousins' photographs of life under Taliban rule on view at Brooklyn's Photoville Festival
Two anonymous Afghan cousins, working under the pseudonyms Mahnaz and Somayeh Ebrahimi, are exhibiting stark black-and-white photographs of life under Taliban rule at the Photoville Festival in Brooklyn. The images use the burka as both subject and visual instrument.
NEW YORK — A series of stark black-and-white photographs made by two anonymous Afghan cousins is on view at the Photoville Festival in Brooklyn, offering a rare visual record of daily life and inner life for young women under Taliban rule.
The images, displayed at the outdoor photography festival held annually beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, are credited to the pseudonyms Mahnaz Ebrahimi, born in 2000, and Somayeh Ebrahimi, born in 2001. The cousins keep their real names hidden out of fear of Taliban retribution. According to the festival's documentation, they live in a remote mountain village in Afghanistan and are ethnic Hazaras and Shia Muslims, two minority identities targeted under the country's ultra-conservative Sunni leadership.
The cousins previously worked as carpet weavers in Kabul. They and their families left the capital after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, seeking distance from the laws and enforcement now governing women's lives. Neither had formal training in photography when they began making images.
The resulting work uses the burka, the full-body covering required for women in public, as both subject and visual instrument. In one photograph titled "It will not stand in my way," a woman in a burka rides a bicycle, her hands steady on the handlebars despite the mesh veil restricting her vision. In another, a similarly clad figure spins so quickly that the billowing fabric lifts upward; a Farsi phrase scrawled on a brick wall behind her reads, "I dreamed that my homeland was prosperous."
A third image, "The Music of Poverty and Violence," depicts a burka-draped figure holding an automatic rifle on her shoulder as if it were a violin, drawing a wooden stick across the barrel like a bow.
Photoville organizers said the exhibition is intended to surface work from artists who cannot publish under their own names. The Brooklyn festival is free and open to the public during its scheduled run.