In search of the hippie trail: Polaroids of Afghanistan

From the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, hordes of long-haired Western youngers travelled from Europe to Central and Southern Asia, through off-beat routes in cheap buses, VW Kombis, motorcycles, battered cars, or using their thumbs. They were driven by a rejection of the mainstream Western life, a need for an escape, and a search for enlightenment, as well as the finest hash or opium – these were the overlanders, the hippies of the ‘hippy trail’. Many of them passed Afghanistan, a country crossed by the Hindu Kush where green, fertile valleys carve their way through gold and red mountains, and sapphire-blue lakes are nestled amidst limestone canyons.
Taken with a Polaroid SX-70 – the one-step instant camera with a folding body design introduced in 1972 – and the Polaroid TZ Artistic film, which makes images look like they popped out of the 60s and 70s, these photos taken in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Bamyan, and Maymana in 2010, aim to recreate the nostalgia of that Afghanistan that was once visited by these travellers – an Afghanistan where the music of Jimi Hendrix could be heard in the streets of Kabul, a place not yet known by its endless wars and where people were notorious for their hospitality.