Daniel Malikyar's Best Shot: Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines

Daniel Malikyar, an Afghan-American photographer raised in Los Angeles, built a long-term project to document Afghanistan outside the conflict-driven imagery that has dominated Western media since 2001. The standout frame: a girl calmly milking a yak in the Pamir Mountains, unhurried and ordinary in a way that runs directly against the grain of how the country is usually pictured. Malikyar's personal connection, his family fled Kabul weeks before the Soviet invasion, gives the project roots that go well beyond a travel assignment.