Sharbat Gula

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Sharbat Gula on posters at the exhibition "The World of Steve McCurry" in Brussels 2017

Sharbat Gula or Sharbat Gula (h) ( Pashto : شربت گله; * around 1972) is an Afghan , Pashtun woman. She became known through the portrait Afghan Girl ("Afghan girl"), which she shows as a twelve-year-old in a refugee camp in Nasir Bagh , Pakistan ; it was first published on the front page of National Geographic in June 1985 . Since then, Sharbat Gula's picture has become known millions of times on book covers and posters around the world.

In the Nasir Bagh refugee camp

Sharbat Gula was born around 1972. She was orphaned by the Soviet army's bombing in Afghanistan and taken to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan. It was there in 1984 that the American photographer Steve McCurry , who documented the misery of the refugees with his camera, became aware of the girl. He made two portraits of her; in the lesser-known picture she covers her nose and mouth with a veil. The film material used was Kodak Kodachrome , the lens a Nikkor 105mm f / 2.5 .

Evaluation and reception of the picture

The special thing about the snapshot of the Afghan refugee girl was the charisma in the eyes, which is probably characterized by an expression of fear, fear and horror of the Afghan war , but also reflected an equally great measure of strength, pride and beauty. However, Steve McCurry is a male photographer and according to her own statement, her teacher forced her to take off her veil and look him straight in the eyes, which was against her will. This means that the eyes can also express fear of the photographer and the unknown person.

The portrait picture, in which she looked into the camera with her large, distinctive green eyes, was initially on the cover of National Geographic magazine. The June 1985 issue became one of the most successful in the magazine's 114-year history. As a result, her portrait became famous in the western world and has been a symbol of the Afghan people and their refugee fate ever since, during the Afghan civil war and the Soviet invasion between 1979 and 1989. In Afghanistan, however, this symbolic image was completely unknown.

It was featured in numerous other publications, making it the world's best-known portrait of a non-public person. Since then, McCurry has tried several times, despite the 1.5 million deaths and 3.5 million refugees in the Afghan war, to locate the girl, who was previously unknown by name. The exact identity of the Afghan girl remained unclear for over 17 years.

Looking for Sharbat Gula

It was not until 2002, after the end of the Taliban regime , that a National Geographic team managed to track down the now married woman near Kabul . McCurry first traveled again to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp, which was about to be closed. Residents recognized the girl as the sister of an acquaintance. She had returned to Afghanistan in 1992, but contact was established through her brother. Through biometric measurements of her eye iris and facial scars, Sharbat Gula, around 30 years old at the time and mother of three daughters, could be identified beyond doubt as the “Afghan girl”. She herself could remember being photographed by McCurry - they are the only photographs that have ever been taken of her. The fame and the symbolic character of her portrait were completely unknown to her.

Her story and that of her recovery was published in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic magazine and as a television documentary. A relief fund for Afghan women was also set up in her honor.

In October 2016, Sharbat Gula was arrested in Peshawar for living in Pakistan using false documents. She returned to Afghanistan after serving a 15-day prison term.

Web links

Commons : Sharbat Gula  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Friend: The Last Roll of Kodachrome — Frame by Frame! ( Memento of February 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), In: Vanity Fair (English).
  2. ↑ Nikon World Portfolio, Summer 1998, Volume 4, Issue 1 ( Memento from June 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Holger Christmann: Found: The girl with green eyes, FAZ (Feuilleton) March 13, 2002.
  4. ↑ "Girl with the Green Eyes". Sharbat Gula arrested in Pakistan. In: tagesspiegel.de . October 26, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  5. ↑ Afghanistan: The girl with the green eyes returns. In: Spiegel Online . November 4, 2016, accessed June 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Gula, Sharbat
BRIEF DESCRIPTION afghan woman
DATE OF BIRTH around 1972