Everyday folk at war

5:35pm Monday 3rd March 2008

A STARK reminder of how the "war on terror" affect everyday people, the new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North is a small display of poignant and intimate photographs by award-winning photographer Seamus Murphy charting how the years of conflict in Afghanistan have profoundly affected one ordinary family in Kabul.

Specially developed for IWM North, the majority of the images are on public display for the very first time.

Fathers, Brothers, Sons coincides with the release of the book "Afghanistan: A Darkness Visible", illustrated with Murphy's photos and with text by Times War correspondent Anthony Loyd.

Fathers, Brothers, Sons records the lives of the Ba Deli family in the Old City of Kabul from 1994 when civil war gripped the country, through the years under the Taliban regime, to the current Coalition efforts to bring stable democracy to Afghanistan and the hopes for lasting peace.

When Murphy first met the Ba Delis by chance in 1994 they comprised a father and four sons. Their mother had recently died of illness, one son had already been killed fighting the Mujahideen and another had lost a leg in a rocket attack as he walked to the bakery.

The exhibition shows how war continued to shape the lives of the family right up to the last of Murphy's fleeting visits in 2007 when he found the two remaining brothers had settled and begun their own families in the fragile peace.

Seamus Murphy has won many accolades for his photography, including six World Press Photo awards.

He has worked all over the world photographing topics as diverse as IRA soldiers in Ireland, the Ebola virus in Uganda, famine in Ethiopia and Olympic hopefuls in Sierra Leone.

The exhibition opens on March 15, and admission is free.

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