Portraiture Shortlist

At the beginning of 2021, I started to photograph people in the streets of Kabul. Foreign forces were to leave Afghanistan later in the year, and the portraits focused on those who would remain – predominantly, Afghans who sold goods or services in the streets and earned little. Everyone I photographed had different expectations for the future. No one expected to be living under the Taliban’s strict Islamic rule by the year’s end. However, on 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized Afghanistan's capital, and it instantly transformed the portraits into images of a bygone era – one meant to provide hope for Afghans, but which ultimately failed many of them. By September, nearly the entire country risked sinking into poverty, according to the UN, which warned of a “rapid, catastrophic deterioration in the lives of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable” including many of those who made a living in the streets.

Phillip Walter Wellman is an American photographer and journalist, currently based in Germany. From 2016 to 2021, he reported on the war in Afghanistan for the U.S. newspaper Stars and Stripes. In 2020, his work was included in the Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London. Originally from Michigan, Wellman earned his bachelor’s degree at City, University of London. He also holds an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics.