Afghan opium

Comments photographer: "I enter the low door, stepped over a puddle, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the wooden door jamb. It's dark in the room. Gradually, the eyes adjust to the darkness, and I distinguish the dark shape in the corner, surrounded by clouds of smoke dancing around. I arrived in this remote region of Afghanistan, to try to understand why many people here have become slaves to opium ».

15 ph via bigpicture

1. Photographer AK Kimoto spent several years photographing families in the remote north-eastern mountain villages of Afghanistan that are under Taliban control.





2. Mr. Kimoto was 32 years old. He lived in Bangkok. Kimoto died in March during a trip to Australia, and his family still does not know the cause of his death.



3. His work has been recognized by UNICEF and a large group of photojournalists.



4. Several close friends organized an online gallery in his honor. They collected his name fund to help the families, with whom he worked.



5. "I do not care if I become famous," - he wrote to his friend photojournalist James W. Delano.



6. "When the last time you saw a 4-year-old baby a heroin? Is not a tragedy? If I can not force others to pay attention to this problem, or if the others do not care, then why bother to live? »



7. "I never worried about awards or something similar. I like to travel, to look at life around, that others do not see, and to share these moments with the audience. "



8. "I have always said that I do what I do, just because I only have two hands."



9. The family, which he photographed in Badakhshane not know about his death. In this region, still restless, and they are still waiting for him to return and promised assistance.



10. Poverty in the region is so strong that parents opium smoke is blown into the nostrils of children, so that they do not feel hungry.



11. "Next to me lay a bundle. Suddenly he started, and then I saw a little skeletal little hand and heard a muffled cry of children "- wrote Mr. Kimoto shortly before his death.



11. "Next to me lay a bundle. Suddenly he started, and then I saw a little skeletal little hand and heard a muffled cry of children "- wrote Mr. Kimoto shortly before his death.



13. In the Afghan village of opium-smoking addicts all - both adults and children.



14. "I offered to carry the mother and child to the clinic. But one of the elders of sharply interrupted my thoughts. "



15. "He smiled and said that the child will never survive transportation in the cold. Besides, he said, this way of life and death is repeated in these mountains for centuries. "



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