National Geographic has tracked down the subject of one of its most famous covers ever. The beautiful Pashtun girl with bright green eyes could have been a supermodel here in the west; instead, she married, bore 4 children, lived through 17 more years of war and poverty, and wears the veil. Sharbat Gula’s new portrait, when juxtaposed with the old, is just as powerful. The eyes are paler now, the veil is duller, the face fuller, the stare now more weary than defiant. Seventeen years seem to have passed so fast since I first saw the picture as a teenager in Sydney. I’ve often stared back at the original portait, and sometimes wondered where and what she was up to. The story is in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Magazine…………………………………………………………………………
At the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984, Gula’s picture was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time.
Although her name was not known, her picture, titled “Afghan Girl”, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named as “the most recognized photograph” in the history of the magazine.
The identity of the Afghan Girl remained unknown for over 15 years; Afghanistan remained largely closed to Western media until after the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001. Although McCurry made several attempts during the 1990s to locate her, he was unsuccessful.
In January 2002, a National Geographic team travelled to Afghanistan to locate the subject of the now-famous photograph. McCurry, upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Gula’s brother and was able to send word to her hometown. However, there were a number of women who came forward and identified themselves erroneously as the famous Afghan Girl. In addition, after being shown the 1984 photo, a handful of young men questioned falsely claimed Gula as their wife.
The team finally located Gula, then around the age of 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed using biometric technology which matched her iris patterns to those of the photograph with virtual certainty. She vividly recalled being photographed – it was the first and only time she had ever had her picture taken. The fame and symbolic character of her portrait were completely unknown to her.
Modern pictures of her were featured as part of a cover story on her life in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic and was the subject of a television documentary, entitled Search for the Afghan Girl, which aired in March 2002. In recognition of her, National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan women.
(National Geographic)
