Simon Norfolk

Kandahar Air Field.

2011

© Simon Norfolk

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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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 × 507 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Simon Norfolk 2016
Reference: P20572

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Simon Norfolk A storage yard at Kandahar Air Field looking out beyond the wire, back into ‘Afghanistan’.

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Simon Norfolk Pakistani ‘Jingle Trucks’ end their long journey up from Karachi at the gates of Kandahar Air Field where they wait to be scanned, x-rayed and searched. Only people, ammunition and emergency requirements come by aircraft. Warlord-owned security companies protecting convoys can charge $15,000 per truck, but a large part of the fee is paid to Taliban protection rackets.

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Simon Norfolk Afghan Police being trained by US Marines, Camp Leatherneck.

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Simon Norfolk One of the huge logistics compounds at Camp Leatherneck. A modern, technological army needs hundreds of thousands of different kinds of objects in order to keep it working. A $100m warplane can be grounded for the want of a $1 part. Supplying these things is a huge drain on the army’s resources and its greatest vulnerability.

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Simon Norfolk ‘Radio TV Mountain’ in the centre of Kabul seen from where the Kabul River cuts through the mountains creating the Deh Mazang gorge. In the first Anglo-Afghan War it was the site of a crucial skirmish and hasty retreat by badly outnumbered British cavalry who had blundered into the midst of a massive Afghan army.

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Simon Norfolk The seemingly endless number of helicopter pads and hangars at Camp Bastion.

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Simon Norfolk The districts of Wazir Akhbar Khan and Sherpur, home to all the NGOs and contractors, occupy the site of the former British fortress from the Second Anglo-Afghan War, ‘the Cantonment’. Glitzy, kitschy ‘poppy-palaces’, flung upon a hectic property boom after the land was illegally re-possessed from squatters can command rents of $20,000 per week when leased out to internationals.

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