Steve McCurry Pictures Show Afghanistan Over Four Decades

Haunting photos of Afghanistan reveal the scars that decades of war have left on the country as photographer who took them reveals how he was almost killed by helicopter gunships....

When Steve McCurry first entered Afghanistan in 1979, the country was a very different place to the war-ravaged land that it is today.

Over the next four decades the renowned Magnum photographer captured the highs and lows of life in the Middle Eastern nation, including the famous Afghan Girl portrait.

His pictures demonstrate both the beauty and harsh reality of life for the millions of people who call Afghanistan home, and how a seemingly never-ending cycle of conflict has changed their lives forever.

Kabul, 1992. A woman holds her two-year-old son in the waiting room of a hospital after he was grazed by a bullet. The image was taken by Steve McCurry, who has spent almost four decades capturing some of the most famous images of Afghanistan ever taken, including the Afghan Girl portrait

Kabul, 2003. McCurry first entered Afghanistan in 1979, just ahead of the Soviet invasion, and soon found himself dodging death from helicopter gunships as they were used to wipe out entire towns. Since then repeated conflicts have left the country deeply scarred. Here a man sells oranges on the back of a burned-out car
Bamiyan province, 2006. As well as capturing the often gritty reality of life for the inhabitants of Afghanistan, McCurry also documents the wild beauty of some of its remotest regions. Here a man rides his mule through the mountains

Faryab province, 1992. A woman, reduced to begging after the death of her husband, emerges from a restaurant having been given money by a diner. Once an uncommon sight, decades of war has left many women as widows

Bamiyan, 2006. Boys play on a destroyed car in front of an empty niche that used to contain a giant statue of Buddha, one of two at the site, which is located along the ancient Silk Road. Both statues were dynamited and destroyed in 2001 on the orders of the Taliban