16. Andrew Quilty - Perspectives of a Photo- and Investigative- Journalist

My guest today is one of Australia’s most-prominent photo/investigative journalists, Andrew Quilty. Andrew started his career in Sydney, then moved to New York City and eventually to Kabul, Afghanistan, after a two-week trip to photograph the Afghan cricket team turned into an odyssey now into its eighth year. He has worked in all but a handful of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, photographed for most of the world's premiere publications and won several accolades, including a World Press Photo Award, a Polk Award, several Picture of the Year International awards and the Gold Walkley, Australian journalism's highest honour. 

More recently, Andrew has focussed on the written word. His 18-month investigation into a CIA-led Afghan militia, responsible for several massacres in 2019, for The Intercept, was recently the recipient of an Overseas Press Club of America Award. His most recent piece published in the April edition of The Monthly is titled, ‘The Worst form of Defence: New revelations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan’, which is an investigation into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Uruzgan. This, of course, is separate to the 'Afghanistan Enquiry' released in Nov last year.

We covered many topics, including:

• Andrew’s entry into photography
• The craft of photography
• The pull of Afghanistan 
• ‘Seeing’ the people of Afghanistan
• Danger of oversimplified narratives of conflict
• Second-order effects of coalition operations
• Foreigner’s (lack of) understanding of Afghanistan
• Background to his award-winning photo “The Man on the Operating Table”
• Andrew’s shift to the written word
• The dangers of life as a war journalist
• Andrew’s views on the future of Afghanistan

You can see some of Andrew's photographs via his webpage here, read Andrew’s article 'The CIA’s Afghan Death Squads' here, and his article ‘The Worst form of Defence’, here. 

For recent updates on the situation in Afghanistan, you can follow Andrew on Twitter (@andrewquilty). If you'd like to comment on the episode, visit us @TheVoicesOfWar.