Burke + Norfolk: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN BY JOHN BURKE AND SIMON NORFOLK

Author: Paul Lowe, David Campbell

Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing (2011)

Binding: Hardcover, 168 pages

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An exceptional then-and-now investigation, suffused in the tragedy of two Afghan wars. Simon Norfolk, a modern war photographer, echoes Burke's work in a profound and captivating way as he probes the artifacts of today's conflict with Burke's 1878-80 Afghan war album by his side. There is nothing else quite like it in photography.

The modern photographs, which seem more accessible to us, give meaning and resonance to the antique ones. This is however no simple re-photography exercise. Rather, it is Norfolk's intention to use photography to cast light on the deeper fissures and echoes of war in images that might, on the surface, be of entirely different things.

His recreations of Burke's portrait groups in Kabul are especially astounding. They illuminate the role of humans as ciphers and individuals, caught in roles today just as they were the - though perhaps a little more uncomfortable now than they once were.

Norfolk is an award-winning photographer, whose work has spanned multiple conflicts. He has been working in Afghanistan for a decade. His depth of visual and intellectual understanding combined with Burke's work help to illuminate the sad saga of a country no one seems able to leave alone.

Perhaps nothing expresses the unworldliness of this all than the side by side of images of Burke's famous spectacle of the white tents of the British invasion force at the Khyber Pass in 1878, and the modern tents and shipping containers (one of them with a big Hyundai sign) at a camp near Kandahar. What, besides the garments, has really changed?