The Cost of Coal in Afghanistan

Oggi sono particolarmente contento di presentarvi un nuovo fotografo entrato a far parte del network di Shoot for Change: Beb C. Reynol.

Freelance da anni (nato in Francia ma ha speso la maggior parte della propria vita viaggiando con la sua macchina fotografica, ed ora a Seattle), con una spiccata propensione per la fotografia sociale e per la didattica (è docente di Documentary Photography presso il Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW.org) a Seattle.

Oggi vi mostriamo alcuni scatti tratti da un suo reportage sulle incredibili condizioni di lavoro di 150 uomini impegnati in una miniera di carbone in Afghanistan.

Ancora una volta benvenuto ad un fantastico fotografo che, sono certo, arricchirà il nostro network ed ispirerà tanti.

Antonio Amendola

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The cost of coal in Afghanistan

(click on the photos to see the Gallery)

During last decades, Afghanistan knew only one succession of conflicts: the Soviet occupation, the Afghan civil war, the rise and fall of the Taliban and today their return.

These events ruined the economic development and eroded the vitality of the Afghan population. Coal, which is abundant in Afghanistan, can be an essential fuel used for the production of electricity, a basic need in Afghanistan.

When the Russian occupied the country in 1979, they sent their own engineers to run a large-scale production of the natural resource. I visited a particular mine difficult of access due to its geographical location, at 12 kilometres northeast off Pol-e-Khomli. During the Soviet occupation, more than 2000 miners extracted the black gold from the mine. The 150 miners employed today hardly cover the vast site through its hundreds of galleries dug formerly.

Often working at a depth of more than 360 meters deep, the miners extra the mineral with only shovels and pickaxes in hand, battery powered lamps on top of their heads, and old equipment once imported from Czechoslovakia. Intense heat, total darkness and the risk of explosion from methane gas make coalmining very difficult and dangerous.

The local demand for coal is far from profitable. Still lacking of major infrastructures such as reliable transportation and security, the Afghan government is unable to exploit the fossil fuel. With the present war against the Taliban wages on, the country seems to be losing grip on its most wanted resource.

Beb C. Reynol

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BIO

(b.1966) Beb grew up in the south of France until his early 20’s. One morning, he decided to follow his instinct and accept an invitation to live alongside abundant mosquitoes, tarantulas, anacondas and a constant 75% of humidity, in a small developing town on the edge of the tropical rainforest of French Guiana. As a new photojournalist for a local magazine, he covered stories of insect hunters, following their footsteps into the heart of the uncharted Amazonian forest.

The experience ignited his interest in reaching out to indigenous people. In 1999, Beb departed once again, with a single bag along with his camera gear, this time to Pakistan. He spent months dividing his time between Peshawar and the Swat valleys, where he discovered the ethnic tribe of the Pashtuns. Fascinated by this culture’s hospitality and pride, he returned several times to the valley to live with a pro-Taliban family, documenting lives across remote and isolated mountainous villages. Beb also had the incredible opportunity to interview Mullahs inside madressas, repeatedly crossing the border into Afghanistan through the Hindu Kush, on foot.

While in Afghanistan from 2003 through 2005, Beb worked along Afghan photojournalists for AINA Media, a French NGO working on contributing to the reconstruction of freedom of expression through education and independent media development. He trained, coordinated and assisted the local photographers in training with a UNICEF anti-child-labor marketing photo project. He divided his time between supervising the students’ post-production work and producing a documentary of his own calledForced Destiny. This photo documentary garnered him international media attention, including being featured in a Canadian national broadcasting television program for Radio-Canada and led to being awarded several high-profile grants.

Regardless of the resurgence of the Taliban influence among the Pashtuns, Beb made friends and invaluable contacts across borders, where he was granted unprecedented access to volatile locations, all the while discovering a unique generosity from indigenous tribes throughout the Hindu Kush. On one occasion, while creating a series of Pashtuns portraits in front of a staged backdrop on a street in Kandahar, a police officer intervened, demanding that all photographic activities cease immediately. After a crowd of 50 people or more was dispersed, this same police officer approached Bed, asking to have his portrait taken.

The World Picture News (WPN) has recently broadcast some of Beb’s stories. Some of his other assignments have led him into the heart of China’s Guangdong province, where Beb documented the laboring of the bamboo harvesters in the remote hills of bamboo forest. Passionate about social change through documentary photography, Beb shared his experiences and knowledge about the survival of indigenous tribes of the South and Central Asia and has been a resourceful aid to other internationally bound photographers about his approach through lectures, workshops and portfolio consulting. He presently teaches Documentary photography at the Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW.org) in Seattle, WA, where he is currently based.