Tomás Munita

Classroom, Kabul Afganistan. 2005

Tomás Munita was born in Chile in 1975. He began working as a photojournalist in South America in 1995. His began working for a newspaper and left to continue a long term project in Potosi, Bolivia. Later he worked for the Associated Press, first in Central America based in Panama and later based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Since 2006 he has been a freelance photographer working mostly on personal projects and for  publications such as The New York Times, Time, Geo and others. He was based in Kathmandu and recently returned to Santiago with his wife and two children. His work has won several awards, including the Leica Oskar Barnack in 2006, two World Press Photo prizes in different categories in 2006 and  the Young Photographer Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in 2005.

About the Photograph:

“The girls are waiting for their teacher to arrive. They had their school destroyed during the civil war, so it recently moved to the abandoned remains of the Kabul theater where more than a hundred students continue their studies. It was a cold morning in 2005. But as soon as the teacher and the other students arrived they enthusiastically started  the history lessons.”