Stephen Dupont

Kandahar, Afghanistan 2005

Stephen Dupont (b. 1967, Australia) began his photographic career in 1989. He has produced photo essays from dozens of countries, including some of the world’s most dangerous regions: Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo, East Timor, India, Iraq, Israel, Rwanda and Somalia. Dupont’s reportage has been featured in The New Yorker, Newsweek, French and German GEO, The Sunday Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, and has earned him photography’s most prestigious prizes, including a Robert Capa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, POY International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award. In 2007 he was the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography for his ongoing project on Afghanistan.

About the Photograph:

“This picture was taken in the village of Gombad, Kandahar, Afghanistan in October 2005. I was embedded with the US 173rd Airbourne as they swept through the village fighting and searching for Taliban insurgents and their supporters. An Afghan special forces soldier appears from a doorway in one of the village compounds after searching it for weapons or hiding Taliban. For me the photograph’s strength lies in the simplicity of the scene and the clash of war and peace. The soldier and the AK-47 clearly iconizes war whilst the child becomes the symbol of innocence, maybe even resistance, the scissors and rice sifter, objects of daily village life.”

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