BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Black-and-white photographs by two Afghan cousins working under the pseudonyms Mahnaz Ebrahimi and Somayeh Ebrahimi are on display through May 30, 2026, at the Photoville Festival in Brooklyn, New York. The cousins use pseudonyms because they fear Taliban retribution for their work.

The cousins are members of the Hazara ethnic group and Shia Muslims who live in a remote Afghan mountain farming village. They left Kabul when the Taliban regained power in 2021. Neither had any formal training in photography when they began taking pictures on their cellphones around 2022.

Madrid-based curator and gallery director Edith Arance discovered the cousins' work on Instagram and collaborated with them through the platform. In November 2024, Arance presented the photographs in Madrid at her Galería Sura, which specializes in emerging photographers from Southwest Asia and Africa. The cousins wrote the captions and poems accompanying the images, which Arance translated.

Arance describes the work as auto-fiction because it combines autobiography and fiction, and she says the cousins' use of light, shadow and natural symbols is akin to magic realism. Discussing one image of a girl at play, Arance said: "There's a sense of play, which should not be unusual. But this is Afghanistan, and this girl is not wearing a veil or a burka, she is just being free. Her shadow looks like an airplane flying away."

The exhibited photographs include "Life Is Today," which shows a young girl dancing on a barren ridge overlooking snow-capped mountains. The photographers said the image is a call to live in the present as the future is uncertain. "Liberation" shows a woman throwing her burka into the sky with her back to the camera. In the accompanying poem, Mahnaz Ebrahimi wrote: "In the name of being a woman, today I will free myself from oppression and darkness to the breeze to the height of the sky."

"Girl by the Door" shows a girl holding a tattered schoolbook, half her face hidden behind a chained wooden door and the other half dimly lit in darkness. Another photograph shows a young girl cowering as an unseen gunman points a rifle at her while she holds a school notebook with a Farsi message reading "There is no justice" — referring to limits on girls attending school. Commentary by Mahnaz Ebrahimi notes that after a new law prohibited education for females beyond sixth grade, girls risked their lives by going to school, and attacks followed throughout 2022 intended to discourage families from sending their daughters to classes.

Other works include "When Will We Laugh From the Bottom of Our Hearts Again," showing a young girl wearing sunglasses and laughing, and "Autumn Games," showing three young girls throwing leaves into the sky. "Vestiges of the Present" shows a woman holding a silent boombox, symbolizing the prohibition of music, dancing and singing for women in public in Afghanistan. "From the Depths of Darkness" shows a woman holding a mound of dirt and twigs from which a butterfly emerges against a black backdrop. "And the Glory of Growing Happens Within Us" shows a burka-covered woman cradling a growing plant in her hands.

Somayeh Ebrahimi said: "Courage means being afraid and trembling in the face of adversity, but with the courage, dance!" Arance said: "The Taliban may say that this is the destiny of women in Afghanistan, but I'm saying this is not my destiny."