Book tip: When Cages Fly

With great courage, determination and perseverance, the Iranian-Canadian photographer has been reporting for years on the steadily deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. At the centre of her work are Afghan women, who now suffer all the more under the Taliban's regime of terror. According to human rights organisations, Afghanistan is one of the countries with the greatest restrictions on women in the world today. Girls are not allowed to go to secondary school and studying is not an option. Women can hardly leave the home unaccompanied and are not allowed to go to any public places. There is no social protection against violence, which is often at the hands of husbands or family members. So, even a prison can become a shelter. This was the starting point for the poignant photo book that the photographer has now self-published.

The fundamental story behind Where Prison Is a Kind Of Freedom – which was originally published as a series in The New York Times Magazine – reveals the lives of women who have been imprisoned because they took drastic measures to free themselves from abusive and violent marriages. The photographer then developed her book project, as an extension of the initial series, which was honoured with the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2020. The book examines the delicate balance between freedom and captivity.

Yet, it is not only the stories and images in the photo book that are so moving; Kiana Hayeri also worked with a wide range of design elements when creating its three chapters. The central chapter is presented as a closed block of pages that have to be torn open in order to access the images and, metaphorically, gain access to the inmates - a clever and effective device. The same goes for the use of materials: transparent pages are inserted, repeatedly, to give space to individual stories. The middle chapter is sandwiched between two sections that describe life outside the prison walls. Here, women exist only as shadowy beings within the confines of social constraints. To conclude, a complementary booklet shows the drastic changes that women's prisons – including the previously shown one – have undergone since the Taliban came to power in 2021. Even the prison as a place of restricted freedom no longer exists. Consequently, this juxtaposition serves as a harrowing visual metaphor that not only describes the journey of the women within the walls of the prison, but also that of an entire nation struggling with terror and tyranny.

All in all, a gripping photo book, which we can only hope gets plenty of support, as Kiana Hayeri intends to continue her work in Afghanistan, revealing realities that would otherwise remain hidden.