Endgame: AFGHANISTAN
Ben Brody

Exhibition Dates:  April 1 – May 1, 2016
Opening Reception:  Friday, April 1st  (5:30 to 8:30pm)
Artists Talk: Friday, April 8th  (6:00pm)

From the Artist:
“I have been working in Afghanistan for the better part of five years, documenting the American experience there through photography and writing. Rather than taking a strictly hard news-oriented approach, I endeavor to make images that speak to the fundamental truths about the conflict – the absurdity of a rudderless war, the alienation in the cultural upheaval on both sides, and the bankruptcy of counterinsurgency doctrine as a basis for the continued fight.

This war is personal for me, both as an American citizen and as a former soldier who fought in Iraq for more than two years. I believe this gives me a unique perspective and authority on my subject. The past twelve years of American war have been marked by a doctrinal shift away from massive, mechanized invasions (as in Iraq) and into a realm known as counterinsurgency. It is a poorly defined strategy, a loose collection of maxims and presumptions, yet many military leaders praise its virtues with almost religious fervor.

The core fallacy of the counterinsurgency doctrine is its presumption of an infallible US soldier, capable of winning anyone’s heart and mind. I often focus on showing this untruth through the profound disconnect between American and Afghan cultures, at the points where they collide. The Arab Spring drew almost every western photographer away from Afghanistan, and I am one of very few who has stayed with this story. Working for the nonprofit GroundTruth Project, I have not worked in service to an advertising-driven news cycle, and have never tailored my coverage to please the military’s strategic messaging experts or guarantee my own future access.

I find the quiet moments of this war are more often revealing than the loud. The existential folly is laid bare, the catch-22s more apparent, the tragic comedy marking everyone.”

Biography:
Brody has been photographing and writing about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. In Afghanistan Brody primarily worked for the nonprofit GroundTruth Project, seeking to read between the lines of America’s endgame for its longest war.  He tries to make images of this historical event with an eye toward the psychology and the often strange circumstances of its political and military actors.  The fruit of his long labors in Afghanistan is FOREVERSTAN, an ambitious multimedia exploration of America’s attempts to extricate itself from Afghanistan in an orderly fashion.

He was recently a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, a LensCulture Exposure Award and was named to Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 for 2014.

Selection of Images:

Terry Arsenault, a private military contractor with Tundra Group, leads Afghan police officers to the site of an bomb strike that killed a young woman near Combat Outpost Mizan in Zabul. US soldiers at Mizan hired Arsenault to oversee a dozen Afghan security guards, but he often conducts missions on his own initiative, unburdened by military regulations and protocols.

In the high mountain passes of Zabul Province, lonely Afghan Army checkpoints like this one in the Dab Pass are crucial to keeping the roads passable for U.S. forces.

Because the Taliban control the roads in Zabul, supplies must be flown in by helicopters or dropped from planes. The Chinook pilots had to make several landing attempts because of the blinding dust clouds kicked up by their rotors. Chinooks are nicknamed “Big Windy” by infantrymen who must endure the cargo helicopter’s gale-force winds.

A soldier sings the US national anthem during a Fourth of July celebration at Kandahar Airfield. No holiday, no matter how small, can pass unremarked by soldiers at the large airfields. Home to the command staff and many support troops, these megabases offer broad choices of food and entertainment, while soldiers at far-flung combat outposts live in an atmosphere of austerity and relentless violence.

A boy stops harvesting opium from this poppy field in Kandahar’s Zhari District to watch patrolling soldiers pass by. Every spring this boy and his family travels from Uruzgan to make money harvesting opium in Kandahar. US soldiers no longer get involved in poppy eradication, as it undermines their primary mission of pacifying the population. Local authorities are tasked with eradication, but they will always look the other way for a bribe. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan supplies the raw materials for 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

An aircraft hangar peppered with shrapnel from a Taliban rocket attack glows like a spray of stars at Jalalabad Airfield.