Edmund Clark: The Mountains of Mejeed

About

The Mountains of Majeed is a reflection on the end of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan through photography, found imagery and Taliban poetry. Edmund Clark examines the experience of the vast majority of military personnel and contractors who have serviced Enduring Freedom without ever engaging the enemy. He distils their war down to a concise series of photographs of the two views they have of Afghanistan: what they see of the country over the walls or through the wire of their bases, and what they see of pictorial representations within the enclaves that they never leave.

At Bagram Airfield, the largest American base in Afghanistan, and formerly home to 40,000, the view, both outside and inside, is dominated by the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Set against their looming presence, Clark’s photographs from his time spent embedded with the U.S. military, expose the dystopian relationship between the man-made landscape of Bagram and the country beyond its walls.

Evoking the intangible, yet intensely felt presence of the mountains beyond, and the unseen insurgents they hide, Clark’s quiet and contemplative images portray an alternative narrative to the one ordinarily presented by the media.