Locating Afghanistan is not a geographical exploration, nor is it an anthropological investigation. It is an essay on landscapes and peoples, a cartography of time and of power. The project is neither about mapping history nor about charting politics; we do not penetrate the burqa nor retreat behind their customs - both of which set up a visual 'otherness' we, as Western viewers, are already too familiar with and readily assume we know. Rather, the project gestures to that we may not know - where Afghanistan may be reconstructed (both literally and figuratively), and exist in our consciousness beyond such representations.

Locating Afghanistan is a search. Not for answers, but for the right questions to ask, and for the space of questioning itself. If it is true that only those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking, then the responsibility of the imagemaker is to prompt the imagination, and no more. Formulating questions is the task for imagination: always attentive to what is lacking in the image. The images in Locating Afghanistan, like all representations, are populated as much by absences as by presences.