The photographer in Afghanistan died ten years ago
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Anja Niedringhaus is often described as a war photographer. I don’t know if she used that word herself. I never got to ask her that. But it seems somehow inappropriate to me. It sounds too much like drama, like big feelings, like simple messages. Anja Niedringhaus wasn’t looking for any of that. The men and women in her pictures are not heroes or victims. They are simply there in this country of Afghanistan, with its contradictions and everyday absurdities.
I didn’t know Anja Niedringhaus well, but the few times I met her stayed with me. One story in particular that she told me in the Bundeswehr camp in Kunduz in 2013 struck me as typical of her wit, her joy of life and her fearlessness. She reported how she and her colleague Kathy Gannon from the AP news agency took a taxi to Helmand province to accompany the Afghan army there. They passed the long journey time by trying out whether it was possible to smoke under the burqa. There weren’t many journalists back then who would even have the idea of taking a taxi to Helmand. If at all, they flew there on a US Army military aircraft for security reasons. You can see in Anja Niedringhaus’s pictures that she preferred to travel the way her protagonists did. She herself once said in an interview that she always reminds herself that she is not the main character.
Anja Niedringhaus in April 2005 in Rome.
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Image: dpa
Ten years ago, the award-winning photographer was shot dead by a police officer in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. At that time, again together with her AP colleague Gannon, she accompanied election commission employees who distributed ballot papers to election offices. At that time, Khost was also a province where only a few foreigners dared to go. Anja Niedringhaus was 48 years old. Her murderer later said during his interrogation that he wanted to take revenge for an American air raid on his village. This is all the more bitter because Niedringhaus repeatedly drew the Western public’s attention to the consequences of the war with her pictures. For example, in September 2009, she was the first to take a picture of the tank trucks in Kunduz that had been bombed on the orders of German Colonel Georg Klein. Many civilians were killed.
Anyone who attended Anja Niedringhaus’s funeral service in the abbey church of the Corvey monastery in Höxter, Westphalia, could see the great recognition she earned in her far too short and all the more intense life. When I see their pictures Looking at it, it seems like it was yesterday.
Afghan National Police recruits study their notes on how to use a Kalashnikov during training at the police academy. Kabul, Afghanistan, October 9, 2012.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
A man waits for customers with his makeshift transport on the outskirts of Kandahar. Kandahar, Afghanistan, October 29, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
Afghan women beg for money on the streets. Kandahar, Afghanistan, March 12, 2014.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
German ISAF soldiers drive past children riding on a donkey. Kunduz, Afghanistan, September 12, 2009.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/AP
14-year-old Afghan polio patient Surat practices walking with his new prosthetic leg at the ICRC rehabilitation center. Kabul, Afghanistan, June 18, 2012.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
German ISAF soldiers patrol the outskirts of the city. Faizabad, Afghanistan, September 18, 2009.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/AP
A horse next to an Afghan soldier observing the area from a checkpoint. Kabul, Afghanistan, November 25, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
Afghan boys enjoy a ride on a chain carousel. Kabul, Afghanistan, October 27, 2012.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
Afghan army soldiers in a military training facility. Kabul, Afghanistan, May 8, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
People cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Chaman, Pakistan, February 8, 2011.
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Image: AP
Afghan men play volleyball in a cemetery. Kabul, Afghanistan, April 9, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
A picture of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a wall in the main room of the district administration. Afghans go to the polls on April 5, 2014 to elect a new president, and that alone could one day be seen as Karzai’s greatest achievement. Kabul, Afghanistan, March 29, 2014.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
Afghan police officers pray as they guard the site where thousands of prominent Afghans are expected to gather for the Loya Jirga rally. Kabul, Afghanistan, November 20, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
Afghan men hang posters of assassinated Afghan Governor Arsala Jamal on the walls of the Eidgah Mosque. Kabul, Afghanistan, October 17, 2013.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
An Afghan boy watches as German ISAF soldiers prepare a makeshift overnight camp during a long-term patrol in the mountainous region of Faizabad, east of Kunduz. Faizabad, Afghanistan, September 14, 2009.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
A member of Afghanistan’s elite Civil Order Police stands next to a bullet-damaged windshield of his armored vehicle after returning from a patrol. Marjah, Afghanistan, October 19, 2012.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/Picture Alliance
ISAF soldiers from the Bundeswehr drive past Afghan men on donkeys during a patrol in the mountains. Faizabad, Afghanistan, September 27, 2008.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/AP
A U.S. Marine walks to collect food supplies after they were dropped by parachutes from an aircraft outside Forward Operating Base Edi. Helmand, Afghanistan, June 9, 2011.
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Image: Anja Niedringhaus/AP
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