If you have the Clock; we have the Time: Afghanistan

©David Turnley.

I went to Afghanistan in the late 90s after the take over of the Taliban, one of the most repressive regimes in the world that rules by strict Sharia Islamic law. I flew to Peshawar in Pakistan, was able to get on a small Red Cross flight into the middle of Afghanistan and drive to Kabul. 
The country has been at war for decades. 
I was told that the Taliban refused modernity, and did not allow photographs and that a colleague had been beaten by an iron rod the previous day. I walked down the middle of one of the main roads in Kabul, chose what felt like the alpha male, of a group of Afghan warriors, carrying a Kalshinikov machine gun with bandeliers of bullets over his chest, and approached with just my cameras. I looked him straight in the eye, shook his hand respectfully and said “hello”. I was invited for tea. I continued this approach and photographed life in Kabul for many days at the beginning of the Taliban in power in Afghanistan. 
Many of these photographs have never been published before.

.