The Poignant Report ‘Afghanistan: No Woman’s Land’ Wins the 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Prize
Thanks to the support of the Carmignac Foundation, photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and researcher Mélissa Cornet travelled to seven provinces of Afghanistan between January and June 2024, to investigate the living conditions of women and girls since the Taliban regained control of the country in August 2021. They met around a hundred of these courageous journalists, activists, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and ordinary people who are standing up against a deeply patriarchal society increasingly seeking to deprive them of their most basic rights.
The report is poignant, edifying and absolutely necessary. Through photographs, personal accounts, videos and drawings, the two prizewinners depict the daily lives of these women, whose dimensions are shrinking at an alarming rate. Locked away in their homes, they are cut off from the world, unable to study, travel or dress freely, their voices utterly silenced. The objective is all too clear: to remove women from the public sphere and confine their existence to the walls of their homes. Prohibitions against life that weigh like a heavy blanket on the shoulders of Afghan women.
And yet, in the privacy of their homes, these women resist and keep on dancing, singing and laughing, in an attempt to fight tyranny with joie de vivre. In this deeply moving exhibition, Kiana Hayeri and Mélissa Cornet are turning our attention to the dreams, fears, hopes, anxieties, joys and sorrows of these women, whose future grows darker by the day.
During the exhibition opening, held at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers, we crossed paths with Carole Bouquet, Elsa Wolinski, Caroline Vigneaux, Claudine Montheil, and Chela Noori.
Photos: Jean Picon
