Nathan E. Lewis

Kim Alphandary painted “The Holy Family’s Escape Into Egypt,” using Luke Powell’s photograph of an Aghani family, the mother on a donkey with a child hidden at her breast. Her title for the painting is simply “Mary and Joseph,” (you can view it at analogizing.blogspot.com.) Kim told me that I should check out Luke’s web site. She considers Luke to be one of the best photographers she has ever discovered. I have been visiting www.lukepowell.com and have been moved by Luke’s photography, especially of the people, the children, of Afghanistan. This past week I contacted Luke and he sent to me the following excerpt from an essay he has published, explaining his work.

“When I began taking photographs in Afghanistan, I was an ordained minister, in the North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Church. I first went abroad to work on archaeological excavations in Israel with a team from the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Religion. After my third season on the digs, while I was on a fellowship from Yale, endowed in the nineteenth century for study in “The Holy Land,” I left Israel/Palestine for India, convinced that Palestine/Israel was not really a “holy land,” and that American influence there was not being used to promote peace.
I ran into the war between India and Pakistan, fled north with fleeing
refugees in a freight car after two weeks near the front, and was stuck in
Afghanistan for the winter when the road west was blocked by snow. While I waited, I discovered that this was the jewel of Central Asia, an
extraordinary window on the ancient world. There I saw villages remarkably similar to ones we had excavated from thousands of years ago. I wanted to make photographs in Afghanistan, so that Americans, charmed by the beauty of the place, would begin to open their hearts to the world of Islam, which they would soon need to understand.
In college I had been the assistant to a Geology professor, and he had shown me where the world’s oil is. It was not difficult to see where
unquestionable American support for Israel would lead. With photographs of Afghanistan and Palestine, I hoped to help save Israel from her own right wing militants and to help the Palestinians and Americans divert disaster in the process. I saw Afghanistan from the beginning as an archetype for the beauty of the entire world of Islam. After Afghanistan fell to the Communists, I worked again on excavations with the Israelis, took the Ulpan program in Hebrew for immigrants to Israel, and then spent an equal period of time making photographs of the West Bank, living with the Palestinians.
The year before I went to Afghanistan for the first time, I took courses in
studio art at Yale, but I was in the Divinity School at the time. At Yale
Divinity School one of the few times I ever heard Islam mentioned at all was when David Kelsey listed it as one of the “deformities of the faith.” I knew that it was dangerous for Americans to go on with that attitude. I also wanted to prove that art could address a real subject with long-range
importance while remaining positive. In Afghanistan I hoped to take images that were beautiful in a way that everyone can understand, but which those who know and love European painting and Japanese prints would appreciate too. In Afghanistan I found a way to bring together the art school and the divinity school.”
Luke Powell