Here's a moving photograph. Here's another - The Afghan Girl. Last night I watched National Geographic's "How They Found the 'Afghan Girl'" documentary right before I fell asleep. It was quite a moving story. 17 years ago, in 1984, photographer Steve McCurry took this picture and turned it into a world famous portrait for National Geographic. Since then the picture has been used all over the world in different forms, to signify the plight of the Afghani children and women, especially the refugeees. He took the photograph of the girl in a school at a refugee camp in Pakistan and after 17 years, they finally traced the girl, a mother of three now. It was hard to identify her, mainly because it's Afghanistan - there exists no telephone directory to just look up her current address. By word of mouth and by diligent field-work, they finally found her and identified her true identity by using Iris Recognition technology. The irony of the whole story is that her original photo is still being sold in Afghanistan, especially to tourists and she doesn't even know it. That was her one and only photograph ever. This is her second and quite possibly last pictre, since she's gone back to her life of simplicity and hardship. One thing I fail to understand is how I missed this whole story, since it was released to the media last year.

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