Simon Norfolk

An informal market in the Mikrorayon 4 housing area, covered up for the night.

2011

Sorry, no image available

Not on display

Artist: Simon Norfolk born 1963
Part of: Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the war in Afghanistan
Medium: Photograph, digital C-print on paper
Dimensions: Image: 366 × 488 mm
support: 381 × 506 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Simon Norfolk 2016
Reference: P20548

You might like

Simon Norfolk Jaw Aka Faisal Nahman and his daughter Nono from Bamiyan province, now living in an improvised plastic shelter in the ruined gardens of Darulaman Palace. Built in the 1920s to house an Afghan parliament, ‘Darul Aman’ translates as ‘abode of peace’.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk The Sham-e-Paris (‘Parisian Evenings’) wedding hall in the Taymani neighbourhood. Common in Pakistan, these huge wedding complexes have sprung up all over Kabul with dining and entertainment halls to seat a thousand on each floor and even an on-site honeymoon hotel.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk A cellphone booster-station built on the wreckage of buildings that once housed a market.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk The former home of Jangalak Industries, a metalworking factory that once had a workforce of 1,800 but was wrecked during the civil war in the 1990s. It is now used as a massive storage yard for scrap metal. This area is all discarded hospital beds and school desks.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk Jawad, who like many Afghans uses just the one name, out playing with an old tyre in the Mikrorayan district of Kabul.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk Young women in the indoor skatepark of the NGO ‘Skateistan’, set up by American volunteers to help young Afghans improve their skateboarding and indoor rock-climbing skills.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk Shah-do-Shamshira Mosque is known as the Mosque of the King with Two Swords. It was built in the 1920s on the order of King Amanullah’s mother on the site of one of Kabul’s first mosques named in honour of an early Muslim king who died fighting Hindu invaders.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk Wasteland at the back of shops used as stabling for draught horses. In the distance is the Bala Hissar citadel, now home to an Afghan army base and mooring for one of the American blimps that carry electronic surveillance gear and cameras.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk The whole eastern side of Kabul, for miles along both sides of the Jalalabad Road is one huge logistics yard capable of supplying the foreign military and rapidly growing embassies with everything they might need from a single cup of coffee right through to an entire airstrip.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk Some of the nonsensical property development taking place in Kabul. The district of the city, Karte Char Chateh, is remembered by Kabulis as part of the bazaar which was burned by the British in 1842 as collective punishment for the killing of the British envoy. The fires still burned when the British retreated two days later.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk On the very northern edge of Kabul. A shipping container is re-purposed as home to men working in a yard casting concrete blast walls. Each section, when sold to foreign embassies or the military, fetches $1000 per piece.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk There are 16,000 US Marines aboard Camp Leatherneck spread over 1,600 acres. Empty shipping containers are used as storage, wind breaks or blast walls. In May 2010 a mysterious fire, that may have been sabotage, destroyed 9 acres of containers. It burned so furiously that fire fighters even lost two of their fire engines.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk A shaded rest area built by helicoptor re-fuelling crews at Camp Bastion.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk The Museum of the Jihad, Herat. A diorama illustrating the city rising up against the Soviets.

2011

View by appointment
Simon Norfolk ‘The Museum of the Jihad’ in Herat. In the centre of the tableau of anti-Soviet mujahedeen guerrillas is Ismail Khan, one-time Governor of Herat and minister in the national government. Mythologizing their role in the Jihad helps justify their control and ownership of Afghanistan’s modern warlord economy.

2011

View by appointment

In the shop

Browse the shop