Winter — Silence in the Highlands

Winter transforms Afghanistan’s Central Highlands into a world of muted colours, snow-covered mountains and long, quiet horizons. Familiar landscapes become more austere, revealing another side of a region defined by dramatic seasonal change.

Photographed between 2022 and 2025, these images capture the stillness and beauty of winter, when the landscape slows and everyday life adapts to the cold.

Boys make their way on foot alongside donkeys through snow, mud and ice in Afghanistan’s Central Highlands. In winter, journeys that are straightforward in warmer months become difficult and demanding, as frozen paths and snow-covered terrain shape e
Water freezes into towering curtains of ice as temperatures plunge to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. The frozen waterfall captures the severity of winter in the Central Highlands, transforming flowing water into intricate formations of ice and r
Snow-covered peaks and deep valleys form a vast, silent winter landscape. Beneath the pale light, familiar mountain contours take on a different character — stark, remote and beautiful — offering a glimpse of the Central Highlands during its coldest

The Quiet Season

In winter, distance feels greater and the landscape more contemplative. Snow and shadow simplify the colours of the mountains, while traces of daily life remind us that these places remain home to communities through even the harshest months.

Here, stillness is not an absence of life, but another expression of it.

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