Luke Powell

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Luke Powell received his Master of Arts at Yale University, where he took painting under Bernard Chaet. He then spent 12 years traveling in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. During the first year of his travels, in 1973, Mr. Powell went to Afghanistan, which he described “as visually exciting beyond anything that [he] had ever seen or has seen since.” Although he tried to make drawings there, the people were so curious that he found it difficult to sketch. Instead, he began to work there with a camera, and quickly realized it was his proper tool. Returning to Afghanistan again in 1978, Mr. Powell left the country less than two days before the Teraki coup.

About his travels, Mr. Powell says: “Over the years I spent many nights in unfamiliar places, remote valleys, islands and highlands, far from the lights of cities. Early on in my wanderings I began to learn the constellations, and it was no small comfort and delight to me to look up and find that at least the stars were familiar.”

He writes further: "It is important for those living in the industrial world to develop an appreciation for cultures that are sustainable, to learn to see beauty and survival in a world where people walk, live in daily contact with animals, raise their own food, pray, and live in families. Such people have as much to teach us as we have to teach them."

In the 1970's, most maps of Afghanistan showed a road which made a great circle around the country with roads that radiate from this ring to Meshed, Peshawer, Quetta, and points in Soviet Turkestan, Uzbekistan, and the Tadjik S.S.R. Much of this circle of roads was hard surface highway built during the 1960's by the United States and the Soviet Union. The American-built stretches were very much like a minor secondary road in the United States, narrow asphalt that was thin enough to be in need of frequent repair; the Soviet-built parts were concrete, three lanes wide and a meter deep, solid enough for tanks. However, the northern route from Shebergan to just northeast of Herat, while shown on most maps, did not in fact exist. This is what the northern route was like. It was a trail for fourwheel vehicles only, and it was impassable for many weeks of the year. This was still the case when I returned in 2003.

Light and Water was printed with permission in Abroad View spring 1999 from Luke Powell's
"The Afghan Folio"

The Afghan Folio has been reputed as “the most widely traveled photography exhibit in the twentieth century.” The first complete showing of the 32 dye transfer prints was at Middlebury College in the winter of 1986, where Mr. Powell’s wife, Kirsten, was a professor of art history. The exhibit has since traveled to colleges and museums across the nation, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Royal Ontario Museum, the United Nations European Headquarters and the Manesh Exhibition Hall in Moscow, U.S.S.R.

Luke Powell photographed this Afghan woman in Kabul sewing part of a quilt on International Women’s Day, during his trip to Afghanistan in 2002 for the installation of the new Administration.