By looking at this image of sharbat gula, can you tell what is missing and why this image by itself is crossing the borders of photojournalism and political propaganda ?
Do you know how why this image is not a good reflection of reality and why it should be complemented by text to be good photojournalism ?
I suggest that you do that.
As I simply don't know what you are getting at?!?
US support of the taliban jihadists in afghanistan, her wasted life is a direct result of Carter & Nixons foreign politics, and that is probably true for her children and grand children too.
The context of the image is that she now lives under strict religious laws. She is a house and sex slave and was forced to "marry" a man soon after McCurry photographed her the first time.
I don't know how McCurry managed to photograph her without the burqa but a good guess is that he bribed her husband.
"
"At the age of 13, Yusufzai, the journalist, explained, she would have gone into purdah, the secluded existence followed by many Islamic women once they reach puberty.
“Women vanish from the public eye,” he said. In the street she wears a plum-colored burka, which walls her off from the world and from the eyes of any man other than her husband. “It is a beautiful thing to wear, not a curse,” she says.
Faced by questions, she retreats into the black shawl wrapped around her face, as if by doing so she might will herself to evaporate. The eyes flash anger. It is not her custom to subject herself to the questions of strangers.
Had she ever felt safe?
”No. But life under the Taliban was better. At least there was peace and order.”
Had she ever seen the photograph of herself as a girl?
“No.”
She can write her name, but cannot read. She harbors the hope of education for her children. “I want my daughters to have skills,” she said. “I wanted to finish school but could not. I was sorry when I had to leave.”
Education, it is said, is the light in the eye. There is no such light for her. It is possibly too late for her 13-year-old daughter as well, Sharbat Gula said. The two younger daughters still have a chance.
The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On the subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look—and certainly must not smile—at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry. Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes.
Such knife-thin odds. That she would be alive. That she could be found. That she could endure such loss. Surely, in the face of such bitterness the spirit could atrophy. How, she was asked, had she survived?
The answer came wrapped in unshakable certitude.
“It was,” said Sharbat Gula, “the will of God.”
"
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text
