Afghanistan: What children’s faces reveal

They are only four, five, or six years old. Some have two siblings, others five, some even seven. They came with their parents from villages far away in Afghanistan. Or from Pakistan, where their families fled but were sent back to the land of the Taliban. Now they must carry sand, earth, stones, and water in a brick factory in Sultanpur. In each of the roughly 100 brick factories here, children—both girls and boys—work alongside their fathers. Their day begins early, often before dawn. They earn 350 afghani for every 1,000 bricks they make, or about 4.50 euros. Each team of two can lay 1,500 bricks daily. The school that once stood here, built by an NGO, closed long ago.

Iranian photographer Arez Ghaderi has portrayed Zarmeena and Niazbin, Atiqullah, Hamze, and other children. What he saw were tired, weathered faces, each one revealing a stolen childhood and a pair of eyes reflecting a life of hardship.

Photographer: Arez Ghaderi, Iran

Arez Ghaderi was born in 1987 in the Kurdish province of Sanandaj in Iran. He currently lives in Germany, where he studies photojournalism and documentary photography at Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Ghaderi has worked as a photographer since the early 2000s and his work has been featured in five solo and over 30 group exhibitions. He has received awards in Iran, Poland, Italy, Portugal, and Germany, including first prize at the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition in 2016.