Billboards in Kabul

There was no shortage of photographs for this project.  David Gill is a tireless, embedded photo-archivist living & working in Afghanistan.

David Gill and I have worked together before, developing his website and visiting Kabul a couple of years ago. This call-up was to produce artwork that was printed onto billboards in the centre of Kabul. He wanted to use a process of making a larger image by composing it of smaller, mosaic photographs. Each character featured below has an interview in a series of films broadcast on the Afghanistan network – Tolo. Every detail of the characters was painstakingly replaced with an array of smaller photographs from David’s archive, all shot in Afghanistan. It was hard to find any green images to work with the General (below)

Needless to say, all the photographs included here are the sole property of David Gill, the big ones and the little ones.

The General (with zoom stages)

The Qu’ran maker

The Skateboarder

The Maths Philosopher

The Mayor

The Taxi Driver

The Sweetmaker