In July of 2001 I traveled to the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan to visit a small group of people called the Kalash. Now numbering just under three thousand, the Kalash represent one of the last non-Islamic minorities in Pakistan and live in the rugged Hindu Kush Mountains near the Afghan border.
For the past three years I have been visiting and photographing various tribal and indigenous cultures whose beliefs encourage a communication with the spirits of ancestors, animals, forests, lakes, mountains and other elements of the natural world. The people in these cultures are usually referred to as 'Animists' or 'Pagans' and their spiritual mediators as Shamans. These photographs from Pakistan represent a part of that body of work.
I had been told that there was a six-year-old boy among the Kalash that had been discovered to have shamanic abilities and was being mentored by an elder Kalash Shaman. As it turned out the 'boy' is now thirty years old and his mentor was his father. Both Marshella and his father Nadir Kahn appear in this exhibit.
Considered infidels by the Muslim majority, the Kalash have had to fight to keep their culture intact and their beautiful mountain valleys from being logged. Residing near the border of Afghanistan the Kalash have witnessed hundreds of Afghan Refugees flee the civil war in Afghanistan and the repressive government of the Taliban. Prior to September 11th there were almost two million Afghan Refugees in Pakistan.
As I traveled from Peshawar through the mountainous North West Frontier Province, I was taken by the great diversity of the people. Pakistan, which was created as a nation for Muslims in 1947, is anything but homogenous. Islam takes many forms--from the very liberal and progressive Ismailis whose women don't cover their face and are expected to get an education to the radical Wahabbi Sunnis such as the Taliban.
Here are some of these people from this fascinating and troubled part of the world.
Phil Borges
January, 2002
