During photojournalist and filmmaker Lukas Augustin’s two years as an aid worker in Kabul, he was treated to a view of Afghanistan that few non-natives ever get. Though he was present in a humanitarian capacity, Augustin found that the violence was actually less overwhelming away from the West’s din of constant news reports and talking heads. Instead, the melody of daily life in a terrain at once exquisite and wholly unfamiliar took over. In “Afghanistan – touch down in flight,” Lukas and his wife Salome capture the beauty of a clanking loom, a bustling playground, and a dirt road at dusk. In the Afghanistan behind the news, inhabitants don’t make due with a war-torn nation. They lead ordinary, full lives in one of the world’s most extraordinary landscapes.

What did you want to show with this video?
Lukas: There have been plenty of perspectives on the Hindu Kush, but the focus has been little on the people that live there. The West likes to label them as victims, or supporters, or even actors of terror. Our desire is not to exclude the war or to romanticize the state of Afghanistan, but to simply let the people speak for themselves in this silent way.