We still have people in the ground who make fortifications in order to protect and use
sight as their main weapon.
Our policies landscape, military policies landscape fascinates me.
We use vision as a form of control and I can't keep slipping away from that idea.
I increasingly find it fascinating how with our sight, without vision, we are truly lost.
You know, we use vision in such a physical way, in maintaining and controlling and surveying.
And I think that's kind of interesting.
Prior to going to Afghanistan, I did about a year of research.
I found a photograph on the net of this base, this very one.
And I said to myself, I'm gone there, because I knew, I knew when I saw this photograph,
I knew the place would be amazing.
I just knew it.
When I came across this image, it immediately made me think of my own work.
You know, I'd seen these sort of structures in Northern Ireland and in many ways it was
exactly what I was looking for.
This parallel was what kept driving me.
And this, even though I was in Afghanistan, looking at Afghanistan, I felt in many ways
and at many times I was still looking at my own country, which is sort of, which is an
important context to put it in.
But that idea that you find an image and you think to yourself, I'm going to go there and
make work about that place.
And then you get there.
It was such an extraordinary feeling when I got there.
You know, I landed in the evening and I was sort of running, because I've been researching
this area for like months and then, you know, you get to experience it yourself.
The art post is an interesting subject, because it's a vulnerable thing in itself.
You know, it's positioned in a very isolated, lonely area.
And it kind of compines the idea of the vulnerability of ourselves within a context of conflict,
which is in itself a sort of futile act.
You know, while these photographs are in many ways made in an almost scientific sort
of approach, and very functional approach, they are, you know, they are emotional and
by the fact of what they are.
This was an interesting day.
This is OP3, Massum Gar, highest point.
And it was a foggy day.
I woke up pure fog.
I thought, well, I'm not going to do much today.
I'd already tried to photograph this area three or four times.
And you enter it from behind that rock, so you enter it here, and you look here, and
you have the wire here.
I could never get a picture of it.
It just never worked, never worked.
And, but I knew when I saw it, you know, there was something amazing here.
So I went up in this foggy day, and so you got that white behind, you know, so it's very
lucky.
I actually made quite a few pictures that day.
I went over the wire and started walking, and, of course, immediately you begin to feel
unbelievably paranoid, because you're no longer in the safety zone of the fortification, and
you're completely exposed.
And for the first time, you actually realize maybe how the people below you must feel,
you know.
And I kept walking, and I turned, and I went, that's it.
I could see it, and I found my position.
And you're completely open inside of a mountain, you know, completely open, and I was just
sure, you know, something's going to happen, something's going to shoot or something.
But of course, that wouldn't, it wasn't going to happen, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't like
that.
I took about six frames, went back, and then I went in behind the bunker there, and I just
curled up there, and stayed there for half an hour.
And it's all psychological, it's not like it was great action or anything, it was all
in your head.
And you know, that was one thing that the police did do, it did create a psychological
paranoia, especially when you went out or when you broke across wires.
I hate it, I hate the whole war thing, I find it terrifying, and I certainly don't see myself
as a war photographer at all.
And what I'm actually photographing is, it's not really, you know, you're in a base.
I see it.
The difficulty is when you, when I wanted to go to smaller outposts, you would have
to walk to them, or you'd take a drive in a convoy to them, and I just absolutely, absolutely
hated that.
Two kilometers would take four hours.
You follow the footsteps of the man in front of you.
There's five meters between you, there's 12 of you.
I wasn't worried about people shooting and things like that.
No, I was just terrified of roadside bombs, absolutely terrified of them.
That sense of paranoia of exposure was very powerful, and it actually made me empathize
with those who live there.
