Artist Project / Mountain with No Name (Pandjsher Valley, Afghanistan)

These photographs, drawn from a larger series, are portraits I took of the mountains that surround the Pandjshêr Valley in the northeast of Afghanistan. These mountains have never been named: they remain blank areas on the map where only the paths are given names by local inhabitants. Their anonymity runs counter to the Western tradition by which every mountain is named, a practice that coincided with European imperialism and the expansion of the colonies. The mountains surrounding the Pandjshêr Valley exist outside this history.