Images of Afghanistan: Photographs by Joseph Hoyt

West Dade Regional Library From Mar 10th through May 31st, 2007The West Dade Regional Library is currently showcasing a series of black and white photographic works by Joseph Hoyt depict Afghanistan in the early 1970s, before the start of continuous conflict and turmoil in the country. Hoyt spent a total of three years exploring Afghanistan and capturing images of his travels there. The artist comments on the work: “Today, even the most remote places in Afghanistan have become household names: Kandahar, Mazar-I-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad. In 1970 few had even heard of the country and most of those who had could not locate it on a map. Let alone fathom what it was like to live there”. “The Afghanistan we know today is a nation laid waste by more than 20 years of war and discord. The Russian occupation has left the land littered with hundreds of thousands of land mines. Many thousands of Afghans have been killed. Countless others have been maimed, blinded, displaced and nearly forgotten. This and the brutal rule of the Taliban has changed the country and its people, perhaps forever”. “The photographs in this collection reveal an Afghanistan very different than the one we hear about today. What we see in these images is not just an Afghanistan at peace, but a people and a country at peace with itself. A remarkable country and its resilient people in many ways unchanged after several thousand years of being at the crossroads of Asia”. For more information, please call: 305.553.1134