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The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
by Emmanuel Guibert (drawings), Didier Lefèvre (photographs), Frédéric Lemercier (layout / design)
Translated from the French by Alexis Siegel
FirstSecond Books, 2009. 267 pages.

After reading The Photographer you will want to become one of two things: (1) a doctor; or (2) a pacifist. You will not, in all likelihood, wish to become a photographer.

The Photographer chronicles the harrowing journey of a photojournalist who accompanies a group of doctors into Afghanistan. It is the mid-1980s, and the Soviet Union is engaged in a protracted war against Afghani resistance fighters in a hot zone of the Cold War. The U.S. is covertly funding the mujahideen to weaken the Soviet Union’s military. Humanitarian missions can only travel at their own risk.

Doctors Without Borders — then relatively unknown in the U.S. — hires photographer Didier Lefèvre to document the organization’s mission to establish field hospitals in the remote hamlets of Teshkan and Yeftal. To succeed, they must climb mountain passes teeming with wolves, hike through valleys controlled by drug runners, and navigate the fractious politics of Wahhabi fundamentalists. Somehow Lefèvre survives, and leaves yearning to do it all over again.

In the Afghanistan of the 1980s, if your horse collapses, you leave it to whinny in the canyons. Your body can be mutilated by shrapnel at any moment, and army helicopters buzz like raptors, ready to strafe your caravan with bullets. Survival is the ultimate goal in a climate that can stretch from 120 degrees Fahrenheit to raging snow storms.

A Feast of Mixed Media

The Photographer is a wildly successful experiment in mixed media. The book features a combination of comic style drawings and actual photographs from the mission. The result is breathtaking. Narrative urgency is sustained through the use of comic panels that link the photographs to the central storyline. For example, a few panels will narrate the background, and then we see the actual subject of the panel in a sharp black and white photograph. This imbues the work with a heightened sense of purpose, that behind the stylized comics there is a stark reality.

The Photographer emerged from a friendship between the French comic artist Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre. After Lefèvre returned from the trip, he published just eight photos out of nearly 4,000 — considered a successful trip by most photographers — and shared his story with Guibert. Guibert became captivated by the tale. It highlighted not only the courage of the doctors, who worked under harsh conditions, but also that of Lefèvre himself, who dangerously struck out on his own after feeling too pampered by the mission in the face of misery. Lefèvre would later return to Afghanistan several times.

Guibert is an established name in the graphic novel world, having created works such as Alan’s War and the Sardine in Outer Space children’s series, along with Joann Sfar. He develops a new style for each work that he creates. In Alan’s War, for example, he used water as a base for his drawings. The Photographer is more reminiscent of Hergé’s Tin-Tin, and the book is stronger for it. In the publishing industry, Guibert explained, “the writers are supposed to think, and the photographers are supposed to see.” But he believed his friend excelled at both.

Doctors and Pacifists

As I mentioned, this book will either turn you into a doctor or a pacifist. A doctor because of the willpower and dedication of the Doctors Without Borders staff, and the differences they make in their patients’ lives. A pacifist because the book reveals the horror of war, in which shrapnel the size of a grain of rice can paralyze a girl. But you may also become a pacifist because The Photographer captures the beauty of the culture and landscape of Afghanistan. As Lefèvre the photographer discovers the rich customs of the region, you do too; as he cries for having worked his pack horse literally to death, so do you. Lefèvre encounters scoundrels, but he also meets people brimming with generosity who shower him with hospitality. It is a bountiful land of powerful rivers and steep ravines. War’s only role is to destroy it all.

The End of the Contact Sheet

This work is not, however, a celebration of the war photographer’s lifestyle. They live hard (Lefèvre died at age 49, of heart failure), and often have little to show for their trips other than a few published photographs.

“Teetering with fatigue as we reach the pass,” Lefèvre says, “I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing there. And as usual, I answer my question by taking pictures.”

Lefèvre feels sidelined on the mission because he can only snap photos here and there, his head tucked into his shoulders, while the doctors perform their work. He can’t even show his subjects anything until he develops the film. This mission occurred before digital film, when a photographer might take 100 rolls of film (’like hunting trophies’, he calls them) and not know if a single photo had succeeded until he entered the dark room. Nor would he typically develop all of his photos. Most of the photos would never find their way off a contact sheet. Only the best would be printed.

But these hardships make The Photographer that much more special. Inside we find contact sheets and full prints, along with Guibert’s delightful drawings. The analog contact sheet will soon be relegated to the past, and with it the possibility of replicating this timeless work.

And it is the timelessness that augurs for the relevancy of this book. In its pages we witness the beginnings of Wahhabi fundamentalism, the precursor to Al Qaeda, but also the beauty of a land in which the U.S. is currently at war — this time without a proxy. We learn that the Wahhabi were hardly representative of the population at large.

“Who are these Wahhabi fundamentalists?” Lefèvre asks one of the doctors.
“A bunch of losers,” comes the reply.

Still, anyone can see that the ruggedness of these peoples would make military victory nearly impossible and, at the very least, force a reconsideration of exactly what ‘victory’ will mean. The Photographer should be required reading for every soldier and politician. Send a copy to Mr. Obama, please.

–Deji Olukotun