Shah Marai, chief photographer for Agence France-Presse in Kabul, was killed today in Afghanistan, one of at least 25 victims of twin suicide bombings in downtown Kabul. The second bombing targeted journalists who had come to cover the initial attack, killing nine of them, including Marai. He began covering events in Afghanistan for AFP in 1998, first as a stringer, later a staff photographer, working his way up to chief photographer. In those 20 years, AFP distributed more than 18,000 of his photos, documenting the horrors of war, but also everyday life—including the struggles of ordinary Afghans and the beauty of the landscape. He had an incredible ability to capture the humanity in almost any situation. A collection of his photos is gathered below. Shah Marai leaves behind a family, including six children. I also invite you to read “When Hope Is Gone,” written by Marai in 2016 about Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out, and about his own role in covering the events of the previous decades.
Remembering Photojournalist Shah Marai
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An Afghan shoe-shine boy Sameiullah, 11, looks on from a hillside towards the Karta-e-Sakhi cemetery, where he waits for customers daily in Kabul on February 10, 2015. Sameiullah, the second son of his eight-member family, is the sole breadwinner. He polishes shoes of customers from dawn to dusk in western Kabul, making roughly $4 daily. Poverty and insecurity have forced thousands of children into child labor in Afghanistan. Children from five to 15 work on the streets instead of attending schools, and are often the sole breadwinners of their families. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan man leads a donkey carrying his wife at Shahr-e-Gholghola on a hilltop overlooking Bamiyan province on November 9, 2009. Bamiyan, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) northwest of Kabul, stands in a deep green, lush valley stretching 100 kilometers through central Afghanistan, on the former Silk Road that once linked China with central Asia and beyond. The town was home to two nearly 2,000-year-old Buddha statues before they were destroyed by the Taliban, months before their regime was toppled in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
Afghanistan's first female pilot Niloofar Rahmani, 23, poses for a photograph at an air force airfield in Kabul on April 26, 2015. With a hint of swagger in her gait, Rahmani is defying death threats and archaic gender stereotypes to infiltrate an almost entirely male preserve. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan air force Mi-17 helicopter flies past commandos during a military exercise at the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC) on the outskirts of Kabul on October 17, 2017. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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A man wounded in a suicide car attack leaves the site of the blast in Kabul on August 18, 2009. Attacks battered Afghanistan as suicide bombers killed 12 people, and a rocket slammed into the presidential compound two days before elections that the Taliban have threatened to disrupt. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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Afghan relatives react during the funeral for Saeed Jawad Hossini, 29, who was killed in a suicide attack on a minibus carrying employees of Afghan TV channel TOLO in Kabul on January 21, 2016. Seven employees of the channel were killed on January 21 when a Taliban car bomber rammed into their minibus in Kabul, just months after the militants declared the network a legitimate "military target". #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
An Afghan girl rides a skateboard inside the bowl of an old concrete fountain during the celebration of International Go Skateboarding Day in Kabul on June 21, 2009. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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A wounded Afghan woman receives treatment at a hospital following a suicide bombing attack in Kabul on March 21, 2018. A suicide bomber on March 21 killed at least 26 people, many of them teenagers, in front of Kabul University, officials said, as Afghans took to the streets to celebrate the Persian new year. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the deadly attack—the fifth suicide bombing in the Afghan capital in recent weeks—via its propaganda arm Amaq, SITE Intelligence Group said. The Taliban had earlier denied involvement via Twitter. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child on the second day of a vaccination campaign in Kabul on March 16, 2015. Nearly nine million children throughout Afghanistan were to be immunized during a three-day national polio immunization drive launched on March 15. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan man watches as election workers count votes at a polling station in Kabul on August 21, 2009. Contenders in the race to become Afghanistan's next president claimed to be heading for victory in polls acclaimed by the West but undermined by complaints of ballot-stuffing and low turnout. #
Simon Lim / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan prisoner looks on before being released from Pul-e-Charkhi prison on the outskirts of Kabul on January 11, 2018. The Afghan government released 75 prisoners of Hezb-e-Islami to implement the peace deal between Gulbuddin Hekmatayr and the government. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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19-year-old Afghan boxer Sadaf Rahimi, a female Afghan boxer, takes part in a training session at Ghazi Stadium in Kabul on January 27, 2016. Rahimi slams into her punching bag deep in the bowels of Kabul's Ghazi stadium, dealing blows to gender stereotyping and doing her part to exorcise history: It was on these very grounds that the Taliban carried out public executions. Sadaf is a brilliant boxer, but she is also an exception in this conservative Muslim country where women participating in sports remains a taboo. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
An Afghan man runs away as dust blows in the aftermath of the third blast at a Shiite cultural center in Kabul on December 28, 2017. At least 40 people were killed, and dozens more wounded, in multiple blasts at the center, officials said, in the latest act of deadly violence to hit the Afghan capital. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan man seen through a broken glass at the house of the parliament member Mir Wali in Kabul on December 22, 2016. Eight people were killed when Taliban suicide bombers stormed the residence of an Afghan lawmaker in Kabul, officials said after the attackers were gunned down following a nearly 10-hour siege. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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An Afghan amputee practices walking with her prosthetic leg at one of the International Committee of the Red Cross hospitals for war victims and the disabled in Kabul on April 3, 2016. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
On April 23, 2018, an Afghan man digs a grave for one of the 57 victims of a bomb blast before the burial a day after the attack on a voter registration center in Kabul. Hundreds of grieving Afghans buried their loved ones in Kabul on April 23 amid growing anger over the attack, which killed 57 people—including children—and wounded over 100. #
Shah Marai / AFP / Getty -
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A photograph taken on April 17, 2012, shows Agence France-Presse photographer Shah Marai at center, embraced by colleague and fellow AFP photographer Massoud Hossaini (left) and AFP journalist Lawrence Bartlett (right) at the AFP office in Kabul. #
Johannes Eisele / AFP / Getty
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