"When Afghanistan is no longer a hell of war, it'll be a heaven for angling."
So proclaims John, an American doctor and fishing enthusiast on a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mission to Afghanistan in 1986.
French photojournalist Didier Lefèvre was also along on that mission, hired by MSF to document a 3-month journey into northeastern Afghanistan. His photographs and story from that mission are the subjects of The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, new from First Second Books. This incredible combination of photojournal and graphic novel supplies a badly-needed perspective on Afghanistan. It transforms the ciphers of news reports into children, mothers, fathers, leaders, helpers, and friends. Yet it is honest. We also meet bad guys, criminals, corrupt officials, and guys who are just plain mean. This is the real world, unpredictable and complex, and above all completely human. The Photographer is the perfect antidote to our often hazy national understanding of this war-torn land, and should help urge us forward in our quest to find peace between our peoples.
Lefèvre was proud of this photo.
The MSF team, Lefèvre in tow, departed Peshawar at the end of the summer of 1986, illegally crossing the border into Afghanistan in the dead of night. Their arduous month-long journey northward was conducted entirely off-road, crossing 15 mountain passes, all over 16,000 feet in altitude, mostly on foot, usually at night. MSF made the dangerous journey as part of a caravan of Afghan arms smugglers. Russian aerial bombings and landmines were a constant threat. People and animals alike were lost, or died along the way.
Even the horses had to lie down to rest.
The team took these risks in order to reach a small field hospital in the region of Badakhshan, and then push on a little further in order to build a new one. Days and nights in Badakhshan were filled with caring for the ordinary medical needs of the population – illness, birth, household accidents – and the extraordinary and often traumatic wounds of war. The team's time was short, as they had to complete the return to Pakistan before the snows came. A tiny staff would remain in Afghanistan to care for the medical needs of the region until the following spring, when a new team could sneak in to relieve them.
The whole story is told in the first person by Lefèvre, a kind and sincere man with a deep appreciation for humanitarian service, and a passionate commitment to his art. This was Lefèvre's first trip into Afghanistan, and he involves us in the physical and emotional intensities of sneaking over rocky, unpaved mountain passes at night for the first time. He immerses us in the confusions and delights of the first encounter of an unfamiliar culture and lifestyle. With understated and unwavering honesty, he exposes us to the horrifying pain and anguish of war. Through his eyes, we are deeply moved by the kindness and dedication of the doctors and nurses of MSF. Lefèvre's independent and inquisitive journalistic spirit takes him to places few would ever dare to go.
The result is a multi-faceted picture of a living, local Islamic culture bearing the brunt of an international war. So many questions are answered here. We see the tender love of fathers for their children. We see the self-sacrificing generosity and hospitality of the Afghan villagers. We sit in the mosques, play with the children, and learn what it's like to wear a chadri (also known as a burqa). We learn what the villagers think of heaven, and we hear inside stories of happy marriages. In several of the book's many honest moments, we see what Afghanistan was like during the initial arrival of ideas associated with Wahhabi Islam, which came to inform much of Taliban policy.
As is often the case in photojournalism, a small handful of Lefèvre's photos were published upon his return, while rolls and rolls of undeveloped film sat in boxes in his house. He continued to visit Afghanistan for the next 20 years, and would tell his stories to his friends. One of those friends was acclaimed graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert (The Professor's Daughter, Alan's War). Together with a third friend, graphic designer Frédéric Lemercier, they created The Photographer, originally published in three volumes in France. First Second Books, known for bringing some of the best of the French bandes-dessinées to American readers, has published The Photographer in an oversized single volume, translated and introduced by Alexis Siegel. Siegel's short introduction situates The Photographer in its specific context while connecting its themes to the concerns of post-9/11 America.
Guibert draws a picture of Lefèvre photographing a nighttime surgery.
This book is a treasure, a beautiful, absorbing study of people in a time of war. It is a record of stark contrasts, of the heaven for anglers transformed into a hell of war which remains, oddly, a heaven for anglers. (The scene where the MSF team's Afghan escort goes fishing by tossing a bomb into a river and collecting the fish exploded onto the banks speaks volumes.) The mountains of the northeast, so beautiful that Lefèvre feels he has found Eden, are marred by bombs, landmines, dead animals, and broken families. The humanitarian visitors are met with generosity and extortion, gratitude and hostility. They accomplish wonders of medical healing in rudimentary and unsanitary conditions, while documenting the wounds of war that cannot be undone. We feel their focus and dedication as they save the life of a teenager whose jaw was blown off by shrapnel, and weep with them when a toddler dies hours after his village was bombed. We share their black humor, their anger, and their love and respect for the Afghan people.
The images always serve the story and its people, which are the real attraction. It wouldn't do to be coy or inventive in the face of war, and The Photographer takes its subject seriously without succumbing to preaching or heaviness. Lefèvre's negatives unspool across the page, leading the way, punctuated by his prints. Guibert's drawings fill in the blanks in some places, and assist the photographs in others. Lemercier's colors are earthy, and just slightly surreal. Contrasts and reversals that define the mission are well-served by the interplay between comics and photos. At times, Guibert's frames add a welcome third-person perspective, allowing us to see Lefèvre even as he photographs an event.
Just before the child on the left died, as his sister looked on.
In the early pages, Guibert's drawings seem vague, indistinct. They communicate the strangeness of the environment as a new arrival might experience it. His work becomes increasingly sharp and distinct as the story progresses and as Lefèvre becomes increasingly familiar with – and engaged in – his surroundings. Lefèvre was nearly out of film when he undertook his fateful return journey to Pakistan, documented in Part 3 of the book. Guibert and Lemercier must carry more of the story, and it really shines. The exhaustion and suspense of Lefèvre's journey are intensified by the density of frames per page, the darkness, the stark, muted colors, and the poor visibility. It takes the reader quite some time to return to earth after reading Lefèvre's account of his departure from Afghanistan. We are out of breath, stunned.
Didier Lefèvre made many more trips to Afghanistan, but it was some years before his work began to reach a wide audience. This lovely and talented man died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007, at the age of 49, tragically depriving the Afghan people of a humble and eloquent advocate. This makes his story, lived and told in The Photographer, all the more precious and poignant. A special consideration was lavished on this gorgeous oversized edition in memory of Lefèvre, for the noble work on the MSF, and for the Afghan people's ongoing woes.
The Photographer is recommended reading for virtually everyone, as civilians and soldiers as well as humanitarian and peace workers will find their outlook and missions enriched through Lefèvre's understanding and compassion. Perhaps we will find new energy for our common cause for peace, for the Afghans' sake, as well as our own.
Sorry to be this picky, but you say: 'Lefèvre's negatives unspool across the page, leading the way, punctuated by his prints.'
I may be wrong, but there aren't negative images in the comic. Even though they are presented in strips like negatives usually are, all of them are positive images; otherwise we would be seeing the blacks in the place of the whites, and vice-versa. All are positives, and I guess the ones that you call 'prints' are simple those of bigger size.
Anyway, great review, I specially like that you transmit a tremendous enthusiasm about the comic, and I hope that this encourages English-lenguage readers to discover this jewel.
And I thought backpacking the Rockies is rigorous!
Just finished The Photographer. I like this new style of reading. I write and am so obsessed with verbiage, where the graphic presentation allows my mind to rest a bit on language and truly imagine the journey. Hiking all day and sharing a boiled egg for dinner? Some of the things that happen are so eye-opening for us REI backpackers with gourmet campsites and Flight-to-Life at hand! When he didn't hike all day, he felt he didn't deserve more than two very small meals. What a lesson for fat America! I wish LeFevre could be alive to enjoy the bit of freedom a digital camera may have afforded him. Great story.
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