Afghan Girl

Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. The photograph, taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic.^[1][2][3][4] While the portrait's subject initially remained unknown, she was identified by early 2002: Gula, an ethnic Pashtun from Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, was a 12-year-old child residing in Pakistan's Nasir Bagh.

Afghan Girl
Year	1984
Medium	Kodachrome 64 colour-slide film, via Nikon FM2 camera and Nikkor 105mm Ai-S f/2.5 lens
Subject	Sharbat Gula

In light of the Cold War, the portrait was described as the "First World's Third World Mona Lisa"^[5] in reference to the 16th-century painting of the same name by Leonardo da Vinci.^[6][7] Gula's image became "emblematic" in some social circles as the "refugee girl/woman located in some distant camp" that was deserving of compassion from the Western viewer,^[8] and also as a symbol of Afghanistan to the West.^[9] CNN called it the 'world's most famous photograph'.^[10]

Cover photo for National Geographic

Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984. Her photograph was taken by National Geographic Society photographer Steve McCurry, on Kodachrome 64 colour slide film, with a Nikon FM2 camera and Nikkor 105mm Ai-S F2.5 lens.^[11] The pre-print retouching of the photograph was done by Graphic Art Service, based in Marietta, Georgia. McCurry did not record the name of the person he had photographed.

The photograph, entitled Afghan Girl, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and her eyes staring directly into the camera, was named "the most recognized photograph" in the magazine's history, and the cover is one of National Geographic's best known.^[12] American Photo magazine says the image has an "unusual combination of grittiness and glamour".^[13] Gula's green eyes have been the subject of much commentary.^[8][14][15]

Sharbat Gula

McCurry made several unsuccessful attempts during the 1990s to find and identify the subject of the photograph.^[16] In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan to find her. Upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, McCurry inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Gula's brother and was able to send word to her hometown. Several women falsely identified themselves as the Afghan Girl. In addition, after being shown the 1984 photograph, several young men erroneously identified her as their wife.

The team found Gula, then around age 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed by John Daugman using iris recognition.^[17] She recalled being photographed. She had been photographed on only three occasions: in 1984 and during the search for her when a National Geographic producer took the identifying photographs that led to the reunion with McCurry. She had never seen Afghan Girl until it was shown to her in 2002.

A devout Muslim, Gula normally wears a burqa^[18] and was hesitant to meet McCurry, as he was a male from outside the family. After finding Gula, National Geographic covered the costs of medical treatment for her family and a pilgrimage to Mecca.^[19]

Pashtun by ethnicity and from a rural background, Gula's family fled their village in eastern Nangarhar during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan when she was around six years old. Along with her father, brother, and three sisters, she walked across the mountains to Pakistan to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984 where she was photographed.^[18]

On 26 October 2016, Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency arrested Gula for living in Pakistan with forged documents.^[20] She was sentenced to fifteen days in detention and deported to Afghanistan.^[21][22] Following the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2021, women's rights were curtailed under their conservative rule, and high-profile women were threatened or intimidated. The Afghan Girl photograph had made Gula globally famous, hence her prominence put her in danger.^[23] She sought assistance to leave the country, and was evacuated to Italy with the support of its government in response to appeals from nonprofit organizations.^[23][24]

Criticism

A 2019 article from The Wire described a 2002 interview where Gula stated that she was angered by the photograph being taken and published without her consent. The writer for The Wire suggests that this is because "it is not welcome for a girl of traditional Pashtun culture to reveal her face, share space, make eye contact and be photographed by a man who does not belong to her family."^[9]

Academic analyses of representation and the aesthetics of suffering

Scholars of visual culture frequently use the photograph Afghan Girl as a case study in debates over the representation of suffering, the ethics of documentary photography, and the commodification of images of pain. Art historian Holly Edwards examines the “life cycle” of the image and argues that its circulation through magazine covers, posters and fund-raising campaigns exemplifies what she calls the “traffic in pain,” in which an individual’s suffering becomes a marketable visual commodity.^[25]

Communication scholar Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the portrait became a Cold War and post–Cold War political symbol that constructed Sharbat Gula as a paradigmatic “saving victim” whose suffering justified humanitarian and geopolitical narratives.^[26]

Other academic work has situated the image within broader discussions of gender, human-rights discourse and transnational feminism. Amy Farrell and Patrice McDermott argue that representations of Afghan women—including McCurry’s portrait—were incorporated into post-9/11 political uses of gender that framed Afghan women as oppressed subjects in need of Western rescue.^[27]

The image is also frequently assigned in university courses on photography ethics and human rights, where it is used to illustrate tensions between visual testimony, aestheticisation and the objectification of vulnerable subjects.^[28]

A master’s thesis from Nanyang Technological University cites the photograph in a discussion of refugee-camp photography ethics, noting how the portrait condenses years of displacement into a single emblematic image whose emotional force risks obscuring political and historical context.^[29]

Cultural and post-colonial critiques: orientalism and “white saviourism”

Commentators using post-colonial and cultural-studies frameworks have examined the portrait in relation to Western rescue narratives, Orientalist visual traditions, and asymmetries of power between photographer and subject. Author Rafia Zakaria argues that the circulation of Gula’s image participates in what she terms the “white saviour industrial complex,” wherein the suffering of non-Western women is used to support Western moral and political agendas.^[30]

Sara Kamali similarly situates the image within a representational economy that frames Afghans—especially Afghan women—as passive victims awaiting rescue by the United States and its allies, arguing that the photograph is often read through a culturally illiterate “saviour” lens.^[31]

Other scholarship has noted the resemblance of such portraits to earlier Orientalist traditions that presented the faces of non-Western women as symbols of entire cultures, reinforcing exoticising or essentialising narratives.^[32]

Issues of consent and the impact on Sharbat Gula’s life

Ethical concerns have been raised regarding consent and the long-term consequences of the photograph for Sharbat Gula. At the time the picture was taken, Gula was a minor living in a refugee camp, and contemporary accounts indicate that neither she nor her guardians could have foreseen the extent of the image’s global circulation.^[33]

Gula later expressed discomfort with the fame the photograph brought her, while members of her family voiced concerns about the unwanted attention and the conflict with their norms of privacy and modesty.^[33]

In 2016, Gula faced legal difficulties in Pakistan related to alleged irregularities in her refugee documentation; media coverage of her detention emphasised her identity as the subject of the famous photograph.^[34]

Cultural and religious objections within Afghan society

The photograph has also been discussed in relation to Afghan and Islamic cultural norms surrounding female modesty, photography and public visibility. In many Afghan communities—particularly among Pashtuns—it is considered improper for women to be photographed by unrelated men, and the wide circulation of such images may cause social difficulties for the women and their families.^[35]

Members of Gula’s family have stated that the unauthorised global circulation of the image conflicted with their expectations of modesty and privacy.^[33]

Accusations of “poverty porn” by commentators

A number of journalists and critics have explicitly described the portrait as an instance of “poverty porn”, a term used to criticise images that sensationalise or aestheticise poverty for emotional or commercial effect. Pakistani journalist Maria Sartaj called Gula a “superstar of poverty porn,” arguing that the photograph was widely exploited while Gula herself lived for decades in precarity.^[36]

Sara Kamali also characterised the implicit narrative of the portrait as relying on “poverty porn tropes,” asserting that Western media benefitted from the emotional force of de-contextualised images of Afghan suffering.^[37]

Photography-ethics writers have cited the image in discussions of sensationalism, trauma and the use of striking refugee imagery to garner attention or funding.^[38]

These criticisms remain debated within academic scholarship, but they form part of a wider discussion about the ethics of humanitarian photography and the responsibilities of photographers and publishers towards vulnerable subjects.

Legacy

The World of Steve McCurry exposition in the Bourse Palace, Brussels, in May 2017

Interest in the photograph increased after the 9/11 attacks, when the George W. Bush administration began promoting Afghan women's rights during the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.^[16][39] Photographs of Gula were featured as part of a cover story on her life in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic and she was the subject of a television documentary, Search for the Afghan Girl, that aired in March 2002. In recognition of her,^[40] National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan girls and young women.^[41] In 2008, the fund's scope was broadened to include boys and the name was changed to Afghan Children's Fund.^[42]

See also

• Afghan clothing
• List of photographs considered the most important