Simon Norfolk has been studying war for much of his career, in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon – and most recently, in Afghanistan. In a presentation on Wednesday at Aperture, Norfolk talked about his shift away from photojournalism, saying that he had become enraged by the prosecution of the Gulf War and didn’t want his images, in which his perception and opinion are integral, to be offered as illustrations for newspaper articles with which he might strongly disagree. A dozen or so years ago, he ditched his 35mm cameras and began making photographs that offer multiple layers of meaning, rather than depicting momentary facts.

Left: Homeless Family from Hazarajat, Camped in the Grounds of the Old Presidential Palace (2010). Right: A De-mining Team From The Mine Detection Centre In Kabul (2010). Copyright Simon Norfolk, courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery.

Back in 2001, he photographed ruins, minefields, and bombed out villages in Afghanistan with a 4x5 field camera. Inspired by 18^th-century landscape painters, including Claude Lorraine, his images were touched by a beautiful morning or afternoon light that added another kind of photographic truth to images that contain historical references to war and colonialism. “At the time, despite the destruction,” Norfolk said, “there seemed to be the beginning of some kind of opportunity, a better future perhaps; rational, perfectible. Now it seems more uncertain.”

About a year and a half ago, Norfolk was shown an album of photographs made during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in the late 1870s, by an Irish photographer named John Burke. Not much is known about Burke, but historians agree that these are the first photographs ever made in Afghanistan. “Looking at the Burke albums,” Norfolk said, “I immediately saw a cycle of imperial history right there. Imperialism is what interests and enrages me more than anything else. Today’s war should more properly be called the Fourth Anglo-Afghan War.”

Not only that, but the photographs were distinctly different from most Victorian-era photographs of the British Raj. “Burke’s work seems more lyrical, more emotional somehow,” says Norfolk. “Burke is a more complete as a photographer too; he’s great at landscapes, groups, single figures, military encampments, reportage, and even news events. It’s unusual to see such a range of subjects and to be and good at all of them. It’s the completeness of what he does that’s so interesting.”

Norfolk then decided to follow in Burke’s footsteps in an attempt to uncover the kind of society that exists today in a country that is owned by foreign interests and the drug trade. “In Burke’s time Kabul consisted of just Afghans and a few British soldiers. Today,” he continued, “the city has been almost completely internationalized by NGOs; returning émigrés; fast-buck contractors (the paymasters of them all); the foreign embassies; and ISAF. Afghans are set to one side, the 'Internationals' are the decision makers in this town now – the Ministries rubber-stamp decisions made in the US Embassy which is now a small city in it's own right.”

In the bombed-out sections of Kabul, warlords build ostentatious “poppy palaces” and hotels that could have been copied from the Vegas strip, while the inhabitants of the city struggle to find jobs in security, which, Norfolk says, is the biggest industry in the country today.

Traveling around with his fixer, an Afghan photographer named Fardin Waeqi, whom he met while teaching a photography workshop in Kabul, Norfolk also photographed military bases such as Camp Leatherneck and Kandahar Air Base. “If 'camp' makes them sound temporary and dinky then you're very wrong,” he says. “The former is home to 26,000 US marines; the latter (the biggest NATO airbase in the world,) has a busier airport than London Gatwick and both of them are pouring concrete and laying asphalt like they have plans for long after the 2014 'deadline.' ‘A Tale of Two’ cities then, both of them sick and untenable.”

The result of his four trips to Afghanistan last year is Burke + Norfolk, from which 14 images are on view through December 3rd at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, 41 East 57^th Street, 13^th Floor, NY, NY. Signed copies of the book (Dewi Lewis 2011) are available at the gallery.

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