“Khoja Bahauddin in northern Afghanistan 2001,” by Cheryl Diaz Meyer, via Verve Photo.

Some photographs are hard to read, and this is one of them. I believe this is principally, although not solely, a consequence of its jarring and strange composition. Elements appear discrete, unrelated, brought together in an arbitrary fashion. The lines dividing the elements are extremely sharp, and they all have discrete textures, and all are exposed to the light in different ways. The gazes of the subjects are in different directions, and the subjects do not appear to be telegraphing any awareness of one another with their body language.

The net effect of these facts is not peculiar to contemporary photography, but it is peculiar to contemporary viewers of photography: this image looks photoshopped.

I am not suggesting it is photoshopped, mind you — only pointing out that it shares a number of features with blatant photoshop jobs — and not just any digital composites, but the sort of heavy-handed combination that is almost always used for purposes of parody. Indeed, when I look at the head of the man in the left corner, I cannot help but think of it rising from behind the wall in the manner of a Terry Gilliam animation. The result is surreal, jarring, and disconcerting. And, after some deliberation, I think it is also extremely effective.

Disconcertingly, this pseudo-artificiality predisposes me to view this photograph as funny. Clearly it is not, although it does have about it some bitter amusement mixed in with strong moral indignation, which is perhaps hinted at in the text provided:

Only partially exposing her face, Momo Juma begs from men as they leave Friday morning prayers at Jamay Mosque in Khoja Bahauddin in northern Afghanistan. Internally-displaced women have little opportunity to work and simply hope for men’s generosity in the war-ravaged country. Afghanistan is an oppressive place for women, especially those who do not have menfolk to support and protect them. I was once told while traveling there that a woman who does not cover her face in public is like a prostitute offering herself to men. As a woman, and a non-Muslim, I was as good as a dog in the eyes of Afghan men. I wanted to interview Momo Juma, but my translator, a male, thought it would not be respectful for him to speak with her. We were stuck in the country’s logic-defying contradictions.

This note of bitter amusement, while not always the dominant theme in the photographs in this series, is a thread that runs through all of them and ties them together and holds them up. It gives them a coherence and a bite that most contemporary documentary sequences lack. It also gives them a strongly personal quality, which telegraphs the photographer’s presence as a perceiving, thinking, judging agent in the landscape, which I find by turns refreshing and off-putting.

Meyer’s views on the war — and its political and economic ramifications, and its gendered consequences — are clearly very strong; if that wasn’t apparent from the photographs themselves, it would be spelled out rather bluntly in the text slides that end the series.

I’m not sure how I feel about those slides…on the one hand, I don’t really object to or disagree with what they say; on the other hand, something about their role in the series bothers me. Perhaps it is that they appear at the end as a sort of conclusion to an argument, the avowed result of a process of photographic reasoning. I do not think photographs really work that way; they are not a substitute for explanation, evidence, or argument. Or perhaps it is that they feel like the answer key to a test, as opposed to a tool for enabling the viewer to better understand what they are seeing.

I’d be interested in any thoughts you may have on this photographer — please, let me know in the comments section. Also, if anyone has any thoughts on why this series is sepia-toned, and what influence that toning either has or is intended to have on the viewer, I’d be interested; I cannot quite make heads or tails of it.