Photos by Two Afghan Cousins Shown at Brooklyn Festival

Two Afghan cousins living in a remote mountain village are exhibiting cellphone photographs at the Photoville Festival in Brooklyn, New York. The works remain on view through May 30. The cousins, who use the pseudonyms Mahnaz Ebrahimi and Somayeh Ebrahimi, began taking pictures in 2022 after moving from Kabul following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

The photographs depict women in burkas performing everyday or symbolic actions against the backdrop of the cousins’ village. ” Captions and poems accompanying the images were written by the cousins and translated by Madrid-based curator Edith Arance.

Arance first encountered the images on Instagram and later presented them at her Galería Sura in Madrid in November 2024. She describes the series as auto-fiction, noting that the scenes blend the cousins’ actual surroundings with imagined gestures and messages.

The cousins belong to the Hazara ethnic group and previously worked as carpet weavers in Kabul. Several photographs address restrictions on education, music, and public movement for women and girls. One image titled “Girl by the Door” shows a girl holding a schoolbook beside a chained wooden door.

Another, “Liberation,” depicts a woman tossing her burka upward with an accompanying poem about freeing oneself from oppression. The cousins requested anonymity because they fear retribution for their work. Their images are displayed at Photoville alongside works by other emerging photographers from Southwest Asia and Africa.