Rather than mentioning a year, photographers tended to refer to the era of a national leader to indicate the epoch they were discussing, or mention an important event such as “during the war” (civil war) or “when Karzai came to power” (the current president).

Because of the lengthy duration of some of these ruling periods and epochs, exact dates are hard to pin down.

The earliest dates we do have for photographers working with the camera on the streets of Kabul go back to the 1940s, possibly, at a stretch, to the 1930s, or: the 1310s in the Afghan calendar.

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...Here’s a table of comparison for calendars.

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So: if the use of the camera can be traced to the 1930s or ‘40s, that is the 1310s or 1320s in the Afghan calendar, then at least three generations of Afghans have had, and indeed still continue to have, their portraits taken with by kamra-e-faoree photographers, albeit in miniscule numbers.

These photographers often, though by no means exclusively, learnt the trade from their fathers; and in the early days it wasn't wholly unusual that photographers would be confronted with a cliental - particulary if they came from rural areas - for whom photography represented an alien magic.

In some cases these pictures would have been the first images their customers had seen of themselves - or would ever see; occasionally photographers even had to convince clients that the image they had just taken was indeed their likeness – not, as we were told on one occasion, a mirror.

It should also be noted the religious establishment in Afghanistan frowned on photography for theological reasons. Islamic clerics argued (and still do) that reproducing the likeness of a living creature was the responsibility of Allah (God) alone, not that of any other human. In ecclesiastical eyes reproducing human as well as animal images was tantamount to being a Kafir (a non-believer), not a pious Muslim.

This would again prove to be a thorny issue when the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

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................................ ...© Thomas Dworzak & Trolley Books

Sometime around the mid-1950s the oldest of kamra-e-faoree photographers speak of a boom in the numbers of their kind in Kabul.

This was, they say, as a result of a governmental drive to distribute national identity cards countrywide, with a photo attached.

In modern-day Afghanistan photographs have for decades been affixed to a multitude of official documentation: children’s school cards; soldier’s identification; driving licenses; as well as being attached to legal documentation such as that necessary in property disputes.

However, the mainstay of the kamra-e-faoree photographer’s trade in the early days was it seems to provide photographs for the Afghan national identity card: the tazkira.

The tazkira is the most important identity document in Afghanistan; currently, it is obligatory for males, optional for females, and can be issued from birth.

This is a gallery of images of a pre-1992 tazkira in the form of a 20-page booklet (post-1992 the tazkira came in large certificate form, which is usually photocopied into a handy size to fit in the shirt-pocket.)

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Tazkira are around in one form or another a long time. Below is a photocopy of a tazkira from 1920 which didn't require a photograph. If you look at the bottom right-hand corner of the photocopy, you'll see a thumbprint; as with a photograph now, thumbprints were considered a form of documentary fidelity in Afghanistan in the past.

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.....................................Courtesy of the National Archive, Kabul.

And here’s where you’ll find it in the National Archives.

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The plan to attach an identity photograph to the tazkira is likely to have been a turning point in kamra-e-faoree photography in Afghanistan as it provided, with masses of potential customers, a steady and guaranteed income for photographers. After a nationwide government contract was awarded to take the photographs, dozens of new kamra-e-faoree photographers were trained and sent to towns and villages all over the country.

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According to photographers in Kabul, it was a civil servant called Afandi who won this contract; as a result, he, along with his business partner Ahmadin Taufiq was directly responsible for training a cadre of kamra-e-faoree photographers in Afghanistan in the 1950s; who would of course go on and train other photographers.

The knowledgeable Mohammad Usman pictured below claims Afandi was responsible for making the very first Afghan kamra-e-faoree.

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Here’s his story.

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And this is Afandi.

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Requiring only a minimum of equipment, kamra-e-faoree photographers were mobile, capable of providing identity photographs quickly, and they could do so very cheaply, making kamra-e-faoree photography the first type of photography that was available relatively en masse in Afghanistan.

Newly trained, photographers traveled all over the country, sometimes to remote villages where they were accompanied by government officials to fill in the paperwork and issue a tazkira on the spot.

This teaming up of the kamra-e-faoree photographer with a scribe (essentially the function of the official) can still be seen in Afghanistan today – after an art. Beneath is a picture of Habibullah who has been a scribe for the past thirty years. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the street to Qalam Nabi, one of the last working kamra-e-faoree photographers in Kabul. The man immediately to his left is also a scribe.

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Lying beside Habibullah are a variety of forms with official stamps for various administrative purposes, and pens of different colours. Most of the forms require photographic identification as with this form Habibullah showed us below.

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Scribes are a common sight in Kabul – the fact that there is enough work to sustain them is likely connected to the very high illiteracy rates in Afghanistan, as well as the amount of bureaucracy.

Traditionally, scribes and kamra-e-faoree photographers often clustered in the same places, such as in front of government ministries, courthouses and embassies - essentially where forms requiring photographic identification needed to be filled in. But kamra-e-faoree photographers also worked from busy chowks and street junctions, as well as directly outside of photo-studios in and around the city.

Here’s a map showing some of the photo-studios where we found kamra-e-faoree photographers had been working.

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..................................................Click on the map to enlarge

Many of the photographers we met owned their own photo-studio, though we don't believe this is necessarily the standard: it has to be said our interviews were more often with studio-owning kamra-e-faoree photographers because they were easier to locate than their street-based counterparts who didn't have a studio to anchor themselves geographically (or financially for that matter, making it possibly more likely that street based photographers might drift into other types of work). If working from a studio the photographer often kept a kamra-e-faoree standing outside on the street. Inside the shop, they often used large format cameras which they called the 'Indian camera' to make individual and family portraits. 

On the right: an image of Ahmad Zia Ansari using an 'Indian camera' in his photo-studio in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Clearly, many kamra-e-faoree photographers are versed in more types of photography than the kamra-e-faoree. Here are some of the old cameras we found the photographers had been using at one time or another in their careers.

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And being an adaptable craft it's not surprising that the kamra-e-faoree has found more uses other than being used exclusively for identity photographs. Afghan clients sometimes obtained kamra-e-faoree photographs as mementos, having portraits made of themselves with friends and family, like this one below.

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.................Courtesy of Fading Afghanistan

Passing foreign photo-journalists and the odd tourist also had photos taken with the kamra-e-faoree. Here's a photograph a British tourist made in 2006 in Kabul.

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............................................Courtesy of Adam K. Ashgar

While some kamra-e-faoree photographers using techniques of montage and collage that are replicated widely in both earlier large format hand-coloured photography and contemporary Afghan digital photography, have turned the camera on their own families to thrilling effect.

This montage (from circa. 1950s) belongs to collection of Abdul Satar and is of his father. Naturally enough, he keeps it as a memento in his family album.

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But any image, regardless of its original purpose, can be a memento.

In 1996, the photographer Fazal Sheikh traveled to Afghan refugee camps in northern Pakistan where he was told the stories of Afghans who had lost loved ones during the Soviet invasion and the subsequent civil war. Some of the refugees possessed photographs of those they had lost; some were taken with a kamra-e-faoree.

Below, Qurban Qul, one of the Afghans Fazal Sheikh met in northern Pakistan, holds a kamra-e-faoree photograph of her son Mullah Awar. He was killed fighting with the Mujahedin in 1986 when he was eighteen. Fazal Sheikh’s touching film The Victor Weeps can be seen here.

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.......................................©Fazal Sheikh

With war raging in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979, colossal numbers of Afghans received war-related injuries. Sometimes they needed photographic proof of their injuries to claim benefits and medical attention from the clinics and organisations operating to help them. One such victim who lost an eye fighting against the Soviets was Mullah Omar, the present leader of the Taliban.

Here’s a kamra-e-faoree photograph of Mullah Omar from 1993 (verified by Pakistani intelligence).

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.................................................© Magnum Photos

Mullah Omar’s (alleged) portrait may seem at odds with the commonly held view that the Taliban were fundamentally opposed to the depiction of the human (and animal) form - in any shape of manner. It certainly is at odds with the following Taliban edict from 1996 reprinted in  Ahmed Rashid’s book Taliban (Rashid by the way stressed that any typos which appeared in the list of decrees in his book were the Taliban’s and not his.)

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However, kamra-e-faoree photographers were allowed to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan - even if, as the accounts we received testify, they at first met with beatings and intimidation until the Taliban finally relented allowing kamra-e-faoree photographers to work unhindered.

Here’s a picture of a kamra-e-faoree photographer taking a photograph in March 2000 during the Taliban-era in in Kabul.

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 .....................Photo by Alan Edelstein published in Transition 2007.

The image is a frame-grab from the video camera of Alan Edelstein, an American film-maker, who was in an odd as well as precarious position whereby the Taliban had given him permission to carry a camera in the country but not to use it which they considered "unIslamic" – but of course he did (surreptitiously).

Ultimately, the services of kamra-e-faoree photographers were needed by the Taliban to produce a variety of photographic identification – sometimes for Taliban themselves. Indeed after their fall, files containing images of Taliban recruits were found in the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul.

It should be noted that the Taliban stance on photography was not necessarily the only or the greatest challenge to kamra-e-faoree photography. The infighting of various Mujahedin factions and warlords for control of the country after the Soviets left in 1989 reeked havoc in Afghanistan. Kabul was a major centre of the conflict and saw a brutal period of bombardment which at its height was estimated to have killed twenty-five thousand civilians.

Many photographers in Kabul had their studios destroyed or looted during this time. Those who survived and stayed on often lived in atrocious conditions.

Though as the photograph below of photographer Ghulam Ahmad taking a picture of little Yaido testifies, life did continue. The photo was taken in Kabul in 1996 before the Taliban took control.

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..........Photographed by Tony Ashby and published in the Western Australian 1996.

Since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States of America and their allies, and the subsequent fall of the Taliban, there has been a huge increase in photography in Kabul.

Reports suggest that kamra-e-faoree photography actually flourished in the years immediately following the invasion, and photo-studios certainly wasted no time in cashing in on a demand for personal and family portraitures. But the last decade has also marked the beginning of the end for kamra-e-faoree photography; during the last five years in particular the numbers of photographers has dwindled so rapidly that by June 2011 there were only two kamra-e-faoree photographers working on a daily basis in Kabul.

While the rapid rise of digital photography and the spread of modern photo-studios has played a major role in overshadowing the use of the camera, so too has the difficulty and expense in sourcing materials, particularly photographic paper and chemicals.

Here’s a picture of Rohullah, a Kabuli kamra-e-faoree photographer; he’s holding one of his few remaining packets of Lucky photographic paper (a Chinese brand); when his present stock runs out, he will have to look for other work.

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Security has also been an issue.

Following bomb attacks targeting sites such as the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2007 and 2008, an increase in security measures has meant that many kamra-e-faoree photographers taking photographs intended for visa applications were denied access to their regular pitches outside embassies.

The 'Ring of Steel' is a series of Afghan National Police checkpoints around central Kabul. Images (L-R): © Sydney Morning Herald; © BBC.

Others reportedly lost their lives in these explosions.

.......................© EURONEWS

Nowadays, kamra-e-faoree – or rather defunct examples of the kamra-e-faoree - play another role on the streets of Afghanistan: advertising the services of photo-studios. In a country where the illiteracy rate is so high (the estimated literacy rate of men is 43% and of women 12%), visual indicators displaying commonly-used services are important, or as one shop owner put it:  “For the village people, because they can’t read.”

In Mazar-e-Sharif we found the kamra-e-faoree more widespread as a service-advertisement than in Kabul. Here’s a picture of an old kamra-e-faoree from outside the Tagin Photo Studio in Mazar-e-Sharif. ‘Photocopy’ is written on the side, advertising photocopying services inside the studio.

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Many of the kamra-e-faoree in Mazar-e-Sharif were also noticeably smaller than those in Kabul. Below: a compact kamra-e-faoree outside Zia Uddin’s photo-studio in Mazar-e-Sharif.

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While some of the studios even build cheap mock-ups of the kamra-e-faoree, as can be seen from the model camera outside Saif Fardin's Photo Studio in Mazar-e-Sharif.

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Photo-studios in Afghanistan are at present almost exclusively digital. The services they offer include the digital manipulation of old kamra-e-faoree photographs which customers bring to get restored, repaired, enlarged and sometimes coloured: it's where kamra-e-faoree meets the computer software Photoshop. The gallery below is composed of kamra-e-faoree images photoshopped by Asad Ullah in Kabul. A film of Asad Ullah's photoshopping can be seen here.

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.......................................©AINA

Many kamra-e-faoree have also found their way into the hands of the large international community in Afghanistan who purchase them as a quintessential Afghan souvenir of their stay (and prices are rising steeply).  Here’s a French expat in Kabul learning how to use the kamra-e-faoree. He just bought the camera and it’s his very first time peering through it.

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© Aurélien de Saint André and Molly de Saint André

And a wonderfully symbolic picture of Landry Dunand, another French national, cycling through the streets of Kabul on a summer’s night in 2010 shouldering a newly acquired kamra-e-faoree which is destined to exit Afghanistan.

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.......................................© Landry Dunand

But whereas kamra-e-faoree maybe leaving the country – metaphorically and literally - Afghan kamra-e-faoree photographers are staying put, having to adapt to circumstances around them. To finish up, here are some stills of Qalam Nabi, one of the last kamra-e-faoree photographers in Kabul, working from the same street pitch that he’s worked from all of his life, and his father before him.

Hanging above Nabi’s kamra-e-faoree a sign advertises his secondary enterprise. .

Electronic photographs.

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