The struggles of women in the Middle East is a commonly discussed topic, but it hardly feels personal. It’s easy to talk about people with whom we have no deep connection. In a society that is so desensitized to war and violence, it takes a strong image in evoke any sort of emotional response. We often view Middle Eastern women as oppressed through the way they dress and where they are allowed to go, but the issue goes much deeper than that. Specifically, with Aisha her nose and ears were cut off after she tried to run away from her abusive in-laws. Women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are viewed as property and controlled to an extreme extent. There is not love for Afghan women from their families, they are expected to be fully obedient and are often treated like slaves. It is difficult for Western women and people to understand the cruelty and crimes that Middle Eastern women are subject to. Jodi Bieber’s portrait of Aisha highlights the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan by highlighting Aisha’s missing nose. She does this by placing it in the center of the image, angling her face to enhance the shadow of her missing nose, and imitating the iconic National Geographic cover from 1980. 

The first response to Bieber’s photo is shock. This is because our eyes automatically notice that something is off. We don’t have to search very long to realize what is wrong with the picture, it’s blatantly obvious. Aisha is missing her nose. It’s not hidden in the picture; she isn’t trying to hide it as if she is ashamed of it, it’s right there. The picture is very graphic in this sense. Without any sounds of gunshots or screams in the distance, this image marks the cruel reality of the abuse many Afghanistan women face. The first questions that jump into the mind are why and how. Without any context from the news story that accompanies the picture we can imagine horrible things. We imagine an acid attack or a gun shot, but the reality is much more terrible. Her missing nose is a punishment for her own self-preservation instincts. Her nose and her ears were cut off as an example to other young women in her village. The violence that has been inflicted on Aisha is known as an honor killing, or in this case and attempted honor killing. Her own brother in law held her down while her uncles attacked her and left her for dead. This issue of honor killings isn’t just for women in Middle Eastern countries. Honor killings happen all over the world, and even though it may seem like a cultural thing, everyone is protective of their own “honor”.  Aisha’s portrait gives a face to the Afghan women’s rights issue and, by extension, women’s rights all over the world. 

Bieber enhances the missing nose by angling Aisha in a way that enhances the darkness where her nose used to be. We aren’t given a full shot of Aisha’s face. She is turned to her left and is giving a little side eye. The angle that the light hits her face makes her missing nose more prominent. If we were to view her straight on the hole may seem smaller and lose some of the effect. Along with the angle we get a dose of her eyes. They are staring directly at us in a way that almost demands attention. She isn’t looking down in shame or away from us. She is challenging us to help and imploring us to do something. It’s easy to ignore an issue that we don’t have a personal interest in, we push it off to the side and think that since it doesn’t affect us it isn’t important. This image attempts to make Aisha’s issues our issues. Her gaze invokes a sense of strength. Despite the terrible atrocity that has happened to her she has a will to carry on with her message. 

This cover photo reminds of us the famous 1984 Steve McCurry portrait of another Afghan girl. This woman is featured in a red headscarf with a muted green background which enhances her piercing green eyes. We can pull a lot of similarities from this photo, like the positioning, the proximity, and the color contrast, but the differences are far greater. In this photo the woman, Sharbat Gula, has a more daring gaze. Her eyes are less soft and her mouth set in a firmly. There is no forgiveness her. Aisha’s gaze is imploring. They both have headscarves on, Aisha’s a deep purple, and Sharbat’s a rusty red. Aisha’s purple is associated with royalty. Both cover photos are about Afghanistan. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush began using women’s rights to raise support for the Afghanistan war and there was a lot more interest in the photo Sharbat (Wikipedia). As time has passed there has been less and less interest in rights for Afghanistan woman, which leads to the belief that when something is no longer prevalently talked about it loses importance. Aisha’s picture brings about a sharper more graphic picture since the audience has grown so used to seeing violence.

In the time period that most of us have grown up in there has been an increasing number of violent images. We as a society have grown used to violence and desensitized to it. It takes a powerful image to make us care for others outside of our own self-involved bubbles. The image of Aisha, much like the image of Sharbat, pull on our heartstrings and make an issue relevant to us even if it’s only for a short amount of time. Jodi Bieber effortlessly captured the true nature of women’s rights in Afghanistan with one picture. Highlighting Aisha’s missing nose by placing it in the middle of the frame and using shadows to enhance it, as well as emulating the iconic 1980s portrait of Sharbat makes this picture unique and powerful. 