Taliban

Kandahar, a city of Pashtuns noted for their gaiety, so to speak, where Mullah Omar had made his final headquarters, has traditions of men in high-heeled sandals, with make-up of kohl and painted nails like sultry silent-movie stars. The Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak, on war assignment for The New Yorker, discovered these photographs of the Taliban days after they had fled the city. They hung among portraits of Bruce Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ahmed Shah Massoud, their faces retouched by the artful brushwork of the photographer. Thomas Dworzak, originally from Koetzting, Bavaria Forest, began freelancing in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in 1991. Three years later he was based in Tbilisi, Georgia, covering the Caucasus and Chechnya.