Kabul City Nights - Series 001

The beauty of a city such as Kabul lies in it's geography. In the warmer months the dramatic mountain landscape that meanders through and around this city is hidden behind a haze of smog. At this time of year though, the clear still air of winter allows this landscape to reveal itself along with the informal settlements that have grown to cover these slopes. In the more established neighbourhoods of the city are the many new concrete and brick infill houses - known locally as 'Pakistani Palaces' -which continue to spring up in ever more creative styles, seemingly oblivious of context, turning their back on the city to shelter behind high, impersonal walls topped with razor wire.

Despite the many difficuties faced in Afghanistan, in Kabul itself there is something of a building boom underway. On a moonlit night the extent of this development shows itself in the garish techicolour lighting of huge wedding halls and the more modest, but no less significant, grid powered lighting of individual homes. The illusion, at least, of a bustling modern metropolis.