A Life Revealed

National Geographic ^ | 2002 | Cathy Newman/Steve McCurry

[XEHRpa]

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story...

more on http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl/

[XEHRpa]

Watched the TV version of this, as it appeared Sunday night on MSNBC Explorer. For those who don't know, one of the most famous photos in photographic history is the 1984/85 cover of National Geographic Magazine that shows the "Afghan Girl" with haunting eyes, as photographed in a Pakastani refugee camp. Recently, National Geographic tried and succeeded at tracking her down (near Tora Bora).

Though never subsribing to NGM, I know the photo well. I found the TV documentary last evening very interesting from a cultural perspective. While some of the Web-based print on the story has focused on how Shabat found life under the Taliban OK (compared to Soviet occupation), on the TV documentary, she made it quite clear that she resented not being able to provide education to her daughters under them. She wanted her daughters to get educated, and asked the US to help rebuild her country. They made a big ado about creating a NGM scholarship program for Afghan girls.

When not taken out of context with the other Taliban remark, the piece definitely showed our Afghan actions as offering Afghanistan another chance at things better.

For those also haunted by those eyes, it was a documetary worth watching. I'm sure it will be rebroadcast.

[Commander8]

I still have that issue.

[LibKill]

It's the same woman, no doubt. Look real hard at the iris of her left eye. There is a distinctive X marking that time has not changed.

[coloradan]

[XEHRpa]

For those who didn't see the documentary, they actually used Iris scanning technology to verify the result, and indeed had a false lead along the way, that looked strikingly like the girl, but whose story and irises didn't match up.

[potlatch]

How beautiful she was!!

[LaraCroft]

How beautiful she IS.

[XEHRpa]

And now she's liven poorer than a West Virginia dirt farmer (as does 70% of the world, or something like that).

Reminds me of the commercial that I'll adapt to the following: "she's 30... that's 73 in American years."

[potlatch]

Yes, she still is. I didn't go read the article because I read it a good while back, but can't remember her age then, or now!?

[XEHRpa]

For those who hate math, she was about 12 then (1984), and approaching 30 in 2002. Interestingly, she said these were the 1st and 2nd photos ever taken of her (well, not this 2002 photo, but the first one taken last year by the follow-up NG team). Of course, she had/has no idea of her world popularity.

[potlatch]

I was thinking of how most of the 'modern' world dotes on beauty, and what a life she 'could' have had. Perhaps she had a happy life except for the Taliban!?

[Hank Kerchief]

I have very serious doubts that these two photographs are of the same women, no matter how many years intervened.

While many changes can occur in the physiology of the face, the bone structure changes very little. The much narrower nose, especially the bridge, of the older woman is one feature that is quite obviously different.

There is a very heavy dark ring around the irises of the youner woman's eyes completely absent in the irises of the older woman. This is much more apparent in the original photos, by the way. Funny that their "iris scanning technology" missed this very obvious feature.

While the mouths are very similar, the mouth of the youner girl is measurably wider. Mouths do not get narrower with age. (More pursed, perhaps.)

Also, the length of the chin of the older woman is much longer than that of the younger. (Notice the distance from the bottom edge of the bottom lip to the tip of the chin.) The chin of the older woman is also cleffed, but not the chin of the younger. This cleff could have developed with time, but it is unlikely.

A more subtle point is that the cheek bones of the younger woman are both higher and wider than those of the older woman.

There is also a mole on the right upper lip of the younger woman missing on the lip of the older woman. I doubt that she had it removed.

Oh well. It made good story. That's what the NGM is into these day, and pushing their environmental agenda, of course.

By the way, I did see the documentary, and still do not believe it.

Hank

[potlatch]

Strange how even a poor Afgan girl can look so mature at 12yrs!!

[XEHRpa]

Hardly, she was orphaned by Russian bombs as a kid. The grandmom managed to get her and her brothers to the Paki refugee camp. Her marriage was arranged not long after the early photo. She hated refugee camp life (too crowded), so they moved back to the sticks near Tora Bora. I think I recall their first child died of some fever. She has three more, if I'm not getting her confused with the false lead's story. Her hubby works 100 miles away as a baker (no business for bakers in dirt-farm country) and sends money home. They appear to live in the equivalent of a cramped mud hut. Life is hard.

[XEHRpa]

Well, unless they are out and out fabricating their validating science, it's hard not to believe them. Re: the lip mole, they said it was probably dirt, and not a mole, in the original photo. Also, she had a distinctive freckle on one of her fingers which matched up perfectly before and after. Finally, unless they fabricated her dialog, she reiterated the exact corroborating circumstances of the original photo.

So, I conclude that either she is for real, or else National Geographic is more corrupt than I could imagine.

[potlatch]

Sorry for making you tell me the story that I should have read myself!! Apparantly there's a lot more detail than what I read a good while back. Hard life, hard for us even to envision!!

[Hank Kerchief]

So, I conclude that either she is for real, or else National Geographic is more corrupt than I could imagine.

I do not believe it is like that. I mean, I do not believe there is necessarily an intention to deceive. I have no idea how the details that convinced those who are convinced, came about, but I do know that such details can easily be created, not with the intent to deceive, but to make everything "fit" a preconceived notion.

I do not doubt that there were reasons to believe these two women were actually the one and same, but, I believe, once the conviction was accepted, those interested probably worked harder at corroborating the belief than rigorously testing it. For one thing, except for the story, there is nothing else at stake.

If they happen to be right, than I will be surprised, but not dissappointed. If they happen to be wrong, it does little harm. I just happen to believe they are wrong, but I am not convinced their motives were necessarily wrong, at least on this issue.

Hank

[XEHRpa]

The only other detail I would point out, of some relevance to your thesis, is that the estimation of a person "match" was done by three separate organizations, outside of National Geographic's own experience with the woman's testimony:

1) A facial recognition company (that uses facial metrics as the means of correlation) had the teen's face added to the database of hundreds of thousands, and then checked if the adult face drew that as a match. While it did not come up as the best match, it was in the top 20 or so in the category of "worth a second look by human analyst"

2) The FBI analyst, though initially skeptical (because of the presumed facial mole of which you spoke) was eventually convinced (then again, he had access to all data on which to base his decision)

3) as I said before, the iris scanning software company was contracted to do the match. Once they had a crisp photo to work with of the new woman, their software put the odds at 1 in 100 million that the adult was not the same as the earlier photo.

So, I point this out only to say that, there would have to be many preconceived notions to fool all these people, working for four different agencies.

[Hank Kerchief]

Thanks for the interesting and objective reply.

I readily admit, I do not have access to all of the analysis done by various "experts" and orgnizations. I also have no reason to believe anyone is intentionally trying to deceive anyone.

My whole opinion is based on the earliest reports that the woman in the original photograph was found (which are somewhat different than the current accounts) and my personal analysis of a number of photographs, not all of which seem well known. I believe most, and probably all those who have testified that this is indeed one and the same woman are sincere. They may also be correct.

Nevertheless, I have seldom been wrong before in recognizing faces. I will not be dissappointed if I discover I am wrong, only a little surprised.

While I do not think there is really anything at stake in all of this, there is one thing I was originally interested in, but have failed to follow up on. A long time ago I made a polite request for a copy of the original model release for the photo originally feature in the NGM. I never received any response at all. I now wish I had followed up on that request, because I suspect there was no model release. If there were, it would be interesting to compare signatures with the woman now believed to be the originally photographed person. (I have been, among many other things, a professional photographer, thus my interest in model releases.)

If there is no model release, some enterprising lawyer could probably make himself and the woman now accepted as the original "model" an interesting settlement with NGM. However, I do not know if there was a model release or not, and there very well may have been one, and the comparison of signatures may already have been made. I wonder why this would not have been reported, however. (Maybe it was. My wife and I do not watch TV, so, some things that are not published in other places or on the Internet do get by us.)

Hank