The Afghan Girl

In 1984, photographer Steve McCurry took a picture which changed the perception of Afghan refugees, highlighted the plights of men and women in a country wracked by war and became a symbol of resilience and strength. You may have seen it before:

^ Sharbat Gula as a girl in 1984. This picture was to feature on
the front cover of National Geographic in 1985.

The first thing which must strike you when looking at this picture is the piercing stare of those startling eyes. This picture was taken by Steve McCurry, who found the girl in a refugee camp, noticing her as shy and quiet. He says that, at the time, he had no idea that he had just taken a picture which was to become an icon of the resilience of Afghan refugees.

Years after this picture was taken, a team went to Afghanistan to find this girl, and to photograph her as a women. They had no idea how to find her or if she was even still alive. When shown this picture, one man said he knew her brother, and managed to find him and his sister for the team. Upon sighting her in 2003, McCurry knew he had found the girl. Now a woman, there was no mistaking the set of the face and those eyes. Her name is Sharbat Gula.

When found, Sharbat had 3 daughters, the fourth having died in infancy, was married and had gone into purdah, the isolated state in which many Muslim woman enter, hiding their faces from the public eye. She agreed, however, to show her face to be photographed for the second time in her life:

^ Sharbat says she has never known
a happy day in her life.

Facial features, including a mole on her forehead, and iris recognition technology have identified this woman as the 'Afghan Girl'. Now that she has been 'found', Sharbat's story has invoked the National Geographic to take action to protect Afghan woman and children in their own country.

To read Sharbat's story:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text/1

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html

Easter Island Monoliths

The humanoid heads of Easter Island, or moai, are thought to represent the deceased heads of lineages on the Island and may have taken half a dozen men a year to complete. Last year (2011), a message reached the world which changed the public's perception of these monoliths: the heads have bodies.

^ These statues are made from condensed volcanic ash,
or tuff, and were carved using only stone hand chisels

Volcanic ash from the extinct volcano Rano Raraku solidified and compressed to form tuff, a maleable rock. This tuff would have been repeatedly wetted and sculpted for as long as a year to make these incredible moai. The results of this back-breaking work were then transported around the island and positioned on stone platforms called ahu at the edges of the island, so that the faces looked over their clan's land.

The sheer time and effort it took for men to build and then transport these monoliths (see image) around their island is immense, and pays tribute to the dedication seen in almost all cultures around the world that man seems to have for his ancestors.

The most beautiful of these statues were extensively photographed and became the image which springs to mind upon the hearing of 'Easter Island'. However, over 500 years of erosion buried these iconic monoliths to their chins and so the word that the 'heads' have bodies amazed the world. In actuality, this fact has been known to archaeologists since around 1914, who studied intact monoliths inside the tuff quarry, even naming the largest of them 'Paro', which boasts a 33ft height and 82 tonne weight.

The real news regarding these immense works of ancient art is the study of the carvings, preserved by their burial, on the bodies, which are to be documented for the first time this year (2012).

For more information on the Easter Island monoliths:

http://www.livescience.com/20580-easter-island-heads-bodies.html
(information on the 'discovery' of monolithic bodies)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai
(general reading)