The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders

Book: The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders , by Emmanuel Guibert, Frederic Lemercier, Didier Lefevre, Alexis Siegel, ISBN10: 1596433752, ISBN13: 9781596433755, First Second, May 2009, Paperback

Emmanuel Guibert’s most recent book for First Second was the critically acclaimed Alan’s War, the memoir of a WWII G.I. His close friendship with Didier Lefevre inspired him to combine art and photography to create this momentous book.

In 1986, Afghanistan was torn apart by a war with the Soviet Union. This graphic novel/photo-journal is a record of one reporter’s arduous and dangerous journey through Afghanistan, accompanying the Doctors Without Borders. Didier Lefevre’s photography, paired with the art of Emmanuel Guibert, tells the powerful story of a mission undertaken by men and women dedicated to mending the wounds of war.

The New York Times - Chris Hedges

It is impossible to know war if you do not stand with the mass of the powerless caught in its maw. All narratives of war told through the lens of the combatants carry with them the seduction of violence. But once you cross to the other side, to stand in fear with the helpless and the weak, you confront the moral depravity of industrial slaughter and the scourge that is war itself. Few books achieve this clarity. The Photographer is one. A strange book, part photojournalism and part graphic memoir, The Photographer tells the story of a small mission of mostly French doctors and nurses who traveled into northern Afghanistan by horse and donkey train in 1986, at the height of the Soviet occupation. The book shows the damage done to bodies and souls by shells, bullets and iron fragments, and the frantic struggle to mend the broken.