Women Between Peace and War: Afghanistan

ART WORKS Projects is a visual arts nonprofit dedicated to advancing social justice and human rights through documentary photography and film, founded by Emmy Award-winning art director Leslie Thomas and based in Chicago and The Hague. Its projects have been presented on five continents, in dozens of countries, with hundreds of partner organizations, producing visual advocacy tools that drive action on human rights crises at the grassroots, media, and policy levels. Past initiatives include DARFUR/DARFUR, designed by de.MO, Congo/Women, and After Syria.

Women Between Peace and War: Afghanistan, Tracing the Crisis of the Family in a Country Under Siege, is an international awareness campaign and traveling exhibition created in 2012, when the Afghan government was engaged in major military actions against Taliban-controlled areas. Featuring photography by Ron Haviv, Lynsey Addario, Paula Bronstein, Jean Chung, Jared Moosey, Moises Saman, Stephanie Sinclair, Abbie Trayler-Smith, Veronique de Viguerie, and Farzana Wahidy, the project documents the lives of Afghan women and girls, their limited opportunities before 2021, and their near-total exclusion from public life following the Taliban takeover in September of that year. The exhibition has been presented at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington D.C., the Finnish Parliament in Helsinki, and Scandinavia House in New York, among many other venues across the United States and Europe.

de.MO served as art director for the project, designing the book and exhibition, human rights exhibition design, and publication design in service of one of the most widely traveled documentary photography advocacy campaigns on the rights of Afghan women and girls.