The Sequence

Eighty-two photographs in one order, one to a screen, read at the pace of a page being turned. Nine chapters, two of them held. The captions are at the back, as they are in a book.

Begin

An editorial sequence drawn from Barat Ali Batoor's photographic archive. The photographs are his, and so are the captions on the ten frames that carry one.

Afghanistan

Bamyan and Kabul · 2002 to 2012

The country he returned to after 2001, photographed over a decade: the empty niches of the Bamyan Buddhas, children on the valley floor, horsemen in the dust, a tank left in a field.

Ashura

Hazara communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan · 2010 to 2012

Muharram and the day of Ashura, when Shia communities mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussain.

ICRC

Kabul orthopaedic centre · 2011

Inside the International Committee of the Red Cross rehabilitation centre in Kabul, where people who lost limbs to mines and war learn to walk again, and where most of the staff are former patients.

Flooding Aftermath in Pakistan

Sindh and Balochistan · 2010

The 2010 monsoon floods displaced some twenty million people.

The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan

Kabul and the north · 2009 to 2010

Made with a 2009 grant from the Open Society Institute over seven months, this series documented bacha bazi, the practice of keeping boys as dancers and companions for men with power.

The photographs in this chapter are not shown here. They are held behind a notice, the same one they are held behind everywhere else on this site. Open the series

Seeking Asylum

Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean · 2012

In September 2012, after death threats in Kabul, Batoor left with a camera and a phone.

A man in a hooded top watches a small wooden boat cross a wide brown river at the Thailand to Malaysia border, 2012.

Asylum seekers sitting on the floor of a bare room in Kuala Lumpur, palms turned upward in prayer, 2012.

Men resting on a mat in a dark timber house in Sumatra, banknotes on the floor between them, 2012.

A man tries on a yellow life jacket in a crowded room while another adjusts the straps, Indonesia, 2012.

Two young men on a mattress in the villa at Bogor, one awake and one asleep, 2012.

Silhouettes of people boarding a small boat at night, lit only by a distant orange glow, 2012.

In Kuala Lumpur we were kept under house arrest for three nights.

Men look up through an open hatch from below the deck of a wooden fishing boat at sea, others standing above, 2012.

Two men in orange life jackets aboard the boat in rough grey seas, 2012.

People on the boat waving red life jackets at a stormy sky to attract a passing ship, Indian Ocean, 2012.

People in orange life jackets wading ashore through shallow water towards the jungle at Ujung Kulon, 2012.

Seeking Asylum, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean, 2012.

The captain announced we would have to turn back, and we climbed on deck and waved our jackets to attract attention from anyone passing by.

Refugees in Indonesia

Bogor and Cisarua, West Java · 2012 to 2013

Between the boat and the resettlement flight, months in the hills above Jakarta with other Hazara asylum seekers: shared rooms, football at dusk, waiting for a phone to ring.

The Hazaras in Melbourne

Dandenong, Victoria · 2014

His first Australian series, made in the year he arrived: the Hazara community of Dandenong at home, at work, at prayer, photographed in black and white.

Hazara Genocide Pakistan

Quetta, Balochistan · 2011 to 2013

Families in Quetta with the photographs of relatives killed in the sectarian attacks on the city's Hazara population.

The photographs in this chapter are not shown here. They are held behind a notice, the same one they are held behind everywhere else on this site. Open the series

The plates

Every photograph in the sequence, in the order it appears, with the chapter it belongs to. Each one opens on its own page, where the caption is.

7 of these frames are shown from enlarged display copies, where the added detail was invented by software rather than recovered from the negative. Every one is also served at his own resolution.