00:03Many times when people think of Afghanistan, they just think of the headlines, but there's so much
00:10beyond that. So my intention was to just solely focus on showcasing the people because at the end
00:18of the day, they're far more similar to you and I than we may have seen. We just haven't been
00:24exposed to photographs and stories like this. My name is Daniel Malikyar. I'm an Afghan-American
00:36visual artist. My family is originally from Afghanistan and my parents immigrated to the
00:41United States in 1979, just before the Soviet invasion. And so growing up, I sort of had this
00:49dual experience where at home, I was always shown and got to experience the beauty of our culture
00:58through the food, through the music, through all of the different stories that my family would tell me.
01:05But then when I'd step outside, the experience was entirely different. It was driven through
01:11narratives of what you saw in the headlines. And so I always sort of had this longing to
01:18bridge that gap and gain a deeper understanding of both where I come from, but also myself. It felt
01:26like a piece of me was missing in a way. So I believe that this project in a way was
01:32me sort of
01:34trying to just gain a deeper understanding of what my roots were and almost
01:42fulfill and document the missing void of those stories.
01:57Afghanistan is a country that has many different ethnic backgrounds, thousands of years of history
02:06and culture. And I think in today's day and age, it's very difficult to discover new places and new things
02:16and tell those stories because of how interconnected we all are through globalization, technology.
02:22And Afghanistan, I think, is one of the few places where there are so many unseen human stories
02:30and places that deserve to be shown to the world.
02:36I was in a taxi cab very early in the morning, leaving Kabul on my way to a rural village
02:43to photograph
02:44a fashion subculture that I had discovered. And just as we were making our way out of the city,
02:51I noticed these massive globs of color kind of dancing in the distance. It almost felt surreal in a way.
02:57And I knew right away that they were balloon sellers and they were just on their way to work
03:01in the morning. And you see them scattered throughout the city from time to time. But it's
03:05very rare that they have all of their balloons with them because they they sell them throughout
03:10the day. So I got very fortunate to make that photograph in that very, very brief moment in
03:15time. And oftentimes I feel like the the most special photographs are almost presented to you.
03:22The photograph of this beautiful Kyrgyz girl milking a yak took place in the Palmyr mountains
03:30in Afghanistan. And the Kyrgyz people, they're nomadic. So they travel three to four times throughout
03:38the year, typically. And it's in search of the best grazing land for their cattle. And so in the
03:44mornings and in the evenings, they milk the yaks. It's a it's a daily ritual. And a lot of the
03:49livelihood revolves around the yaks. So I got very fortunate that I happened to document this
03:57moment of a beautiful girl, Sharga, as she was milking the yak in the afternoon before they
04:03were tied down for the evening.
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