Though there is evidence of box cameras similar to the Afghan variety at work in the pilgrimage city of Mashad, Iran in the early 1950s and possibly earlier, it seems feasible that the kamra-e-faoree arrived in Afghanistan from the Indian sub-continent given the history of commercial traffic between India and Afghanistan, and the extremely rich history of photography in India; a number of photographers assume as much , while also recalling that there were Indian studio owners who possessed kamra-e-faoree in Kabul in the 1950s or earlier, during the reign of Zahir Shah (1933-1973).

While cameras similar to the kamra-e-faoree, and using identical developing processes are found world-wide, there are differences between kamra-e-faoree and non-Afghan box cameras in design and function. In neighbouring Pakistan the paper negative box camera was known as the 'minute camera' and often had an external focusing system, while the sleeve to enter the camera was found at the rear.

Traditionally kamra-e-faoree like these had a display frame on the side of the camera exhibiting the photographer's work. Below: Mia Muhammad's display on the side of his camera which also includes colour identity photos and photographs of his friends, who were also kamera-e-faoree photographers.

.. The look of the camera varied from photographer to photographer. Here’s a gallery of images of various kamra-e-faoree we came across. Many of them had to be resurrected from dusty backrooms for us to view.

Below are the sketches of a big camera from Kabul, and a small camera from Herat.

The basic design of the camera was more or less standardised although the size of kamra-e-faoree varied with location. In Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat we came across more compact sized box cameras than those we found in Kabul, Jalalabad and Peshawar.

Photographers added their own lens , the only 'foreign' and the most expensive component used to make up the camera.

It was important that the camera be made of strong wood and that it be resistant to the elements as well as the day-to-day shunting about that it had to endure - because the cameras were regularly knocked over by scurrying children, inattentive passers-by, and on occasion authorities randomly exercising their power.

The camera was made by carpenters. A renowned carpenter in Kabul whose name we heard frequently was that of Ali Ahmad-e-najar (najar means carpenter) who had a workshop on Jeddha Maiwand. Below is a gallery with Manawar Shah buiding a kamra-e-faoree based on the design of Mia Muhammad 's old camera. A manual with step-by-step instructions on how to build a kamra-e-faoree can be found here alongside a film shot with a carpenter in Kabul.

The camera is completely manual – it does not use electricity - while the photographic process is analogue: using chemicals and paper; there is no film ( references to the ‘negative’ paper print by photographers should not be confused with negative photographic film ). Inside the camera the paper prints are developed with the aid of an eye-hole on top of the camera allowing the photographer to follow the development process, and by touch.

Here are some Dari translations for words commonly connected to the kamra-e-faoree.

Because the photographs are immersed in a bucket of water for cleaning, they are sometimes known as aks-e-awi (water photographs). Below Mirzaman cleans a finished positive image.

Customers pose for photographs sitting on a chair against a material backdrop. The lens of kamra-e-faoree are shutterless, so in order to take a photograph, and working only with natural light, the photographer (called akass [عکاس]) whisks away the lens cap with one hand to expose the photographic paper on the inside of the camera; he then replaces the shutter and inserts an arm through a light-tight sleeve giving him access to the camera's interior which doubles as a darkroom. Inside the camera, he develops a paper negative of the image he has just taken. He then shoots this negative ('film') to make the positive ('positive'), and finally develops the positive to produce a finished photograph. A film of the process can be viewed here .

The Afghan Box Camera is a simple box-shaped wooden camera traditionally used by photographers working from a street pitch, who produce, by-and-large, instant identity portraits (aks: عکس) for their clients. In Dari the camera is known as kamra-e-faoree ( ).which means 'instant camera'. It's also less frequently called kamra-e-faoree-e-chobi (instant wooden camera) or kamra-e-chobi (wooden camera). In Pashtu the camera is sometimes referred to as da lastunri kamra (sleeve camera: دلستوڼی کیمرہ) because of the sleeve on the side of the camera that photographers insert their arm into.

Here’s a map showing some of the photo-studios and street pitches where we found kamra-e-faoree photographers had been working in Kabul.

Traditionally, kamra-e-faoree photographers and scribes often clustered in the same places, such as in front of government ministries, courthouses and embassies - essentially where forms requiring photographic identification needed to be filled in. But kamra-e-faoree photographers also worked from busy chowks and street junctions, as well as directly outside of photo-studios in and around the city.

After 2001 girls schools were allowed to re-open (they were banned under the Taliban) thus adding even more to the business of box camera photographers, as can be seen below.

These images below are box camera photographs of school children taken by Ali Ahmad in Herat and surrounds, and are from the collection of Hekmatullah.

It has, in fact, been the documentary requirements of this bureaucracy that has largely sustained box camera photographers in Afghanistan, at times providing them with windfalls of business. When the government of Hameed Karzai made it compulsory for all schoolchildren to be issued with yearly renewable identity cards after 2001, box camera photographers experienced a huge boom in business - fifty years after the initial surge of this photography.

Scribes are a common sight in Kabul – the fact that there is enough work to sustain them is likely connected to the very high illiteracy rates in Afghanistan, as well as the amount of bureaucracy.

Lying beside Habibullah are a variety of forms with official stamps for various administrative purposes, and pens of different colours. Most of the forms require photographic identification as with this form Habibullah showed us below.

The teaming up of the kamra-e-faoree photographer with a scribe (the essential function of the accompanying official) can still be seen in Afghanistan today – after an art. Beneath is a picture of Habibullah who has been a scribe for the past thirty years. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the street to where Qalam Nabi used to work, the last working kamra-e-faoree photographer in Kabul. The man immediately to his left is also a scribe.

Newly trained, photographers travelled all over the country, sometimes to remote villages where they were accompanied by government officials to fill in the paperwork and issue a tazkira on the spot. The officials would also act as age-guessers since birth records were generally not kept in Afghanistan and individuals would rarely be able to pinpoint the year of their birth.

Requiring only a minimum of equipment, kamra-e-faoree photographers were mobile, capable of providing identity photographs quickly, and they could do so very cheaply, making kamra-e-faoree photography the first type of photography that was available relatively en masse in Afghanistan.

The knowledgeable Muhammad Usman pictured below claims Afandi was responsible for making the very first Afghan kamra-e-faoree.

According to photographers in Kabul, it was a civil servant called Afandi who won this contract; as a result, he, along with his business partner Ahmadin Taufiq was directly responsible for training a cadre of kamra-e-faoree photographers in Afghanistan in the 1950s; who would of course go on and train other photographers.

The plan to attach an identity photograph to the tazkira is likely to have been a turning point in kamra-e-faoree photography in Afghanistan as it provided, with masses of potential customers, a steady and guaranteed income for photographers. After a nationwide government contract was awarded to take the photographs, dozens of new kamra-e-faoree photographers were trained and sent to towns and villages all over the country.

Tazkira are around in one form or another a long time. Below is a photocopy of a tazkira from 1920 which didn't require a photograph. If you look at the bottom right-hand corner of the photocopy, you'll see a thumbprint, which was also considered a form of documentary fidelity in Afghanistan.

This is a gallery of images of a pre-1992 tazkira in the form of a 20-page booklet (post-1992 the tazkira came in large certificate form, which is usually photocopied into a handy size to fit in the shirt-pocket.)

The tazkira is the most important identity document in Afghanistan; currently, it is obligatory for males, optional for females, and can be issued from birth.

However, the mainstay of the kamra-e-faoree photographer’s trade in the early days, was it seems, to provide photographs for the Afghan national identity card: the tazkira .

Below on the left is a deed of title for a property in Herat with box camera photographs positioned down the right side of the document; it's over half a century old. Opposite that is a car registration certificate issued in Jalalabad with box camera photos, also on the right-hand side.

In modern-day Afghanistan photographs have for decades been affixed to a multitude of official documentation: children’s school cards; soldier’s identification; driving licenses; as well as being attached to legal documentation such as that necessary in property disputes and ownership.

This was, they say, as a result of a governmental drive to distribute national identity cards countrywide, with a photo attached.

Sometime around the mid-1950s the oldest of kamra-e-faoree photographers speak of a boom in the numbers of their kind in Kabul.

This would again prove to be a thorny issue when the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, banning the public display of images of living beings.

It should also be noted that the religious establishment in Afghanistan at the time frowned on photography for theological reasons. Islamic clerics argued (and still do) that reproducing the likeness of a living creature was the responsibility of Allah (God) alone, not that of any other human. In ecclesiastical eyes reproducing human as well as animal images was tantamount to being a Kafir (a non-believer), not a pious Muslim.

The story below told by Hafeez from the Ramprakesh studio in Kabul about a photographer called Basheer (the brother of Rona ) who went to Herat to work as a box camera photographer sixty years ago illustrates the newness of photographry for Afghans at the time.

In some cases these pictures would have been the first images their customers had seen of themselves - or would ever see; occasionally photographers even had to convince clients that the image they had just taken was indeed their likeness – not, as we were told on one occasion, a mirror.

In the early days of box camera photography in Afghanistan it wasn't wholly unusual that photographers would be confronted with a cliental - particularly if they came from rural areas - for whom photography represented an alien magic.

Generations of Afghans have had their portraits taken by kamra-e-faoree photographers. Some of these photographers learnt the trade from their fathers or another male relative, while others were taken on as apprentices by established photographers of no relation. Many started so young they were initially dwarfed by the camera and would have to use a chair to operate it, as can be seen in the image below.

The earliest date we we can be certain that box camera photographers were working in Kabul was in the early 1950s, though it is possible photographers were using the camera in the 1940s, or according to the Afghan calender, the 1320s.

Because of the lengthy duration of some of these ruling periods and epochs, exact dates are hard to pin down.

The wall of the Zalmadi studio in Herat, below, with portraits of many of the former rulers of Afghanistan and the proprietor's grandfather, is a case in point.

Rather than mentioning a year, photographers tended to refer to the era of a national leader to indicate the epoch they were discussing, or mention an important event such as “during the war” (civil war) or “when Karzai came to power” (the current president).

On the right: an image of Ahmad Zia Ansari using an large format camera in his photo-studio in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Many of the photographers we met owned their own photo-studio, though this was not necessarily the standard: it has to be said our interviews were more often with studio-owning kamra-e-faoree photographers because they were easier to locate than their street-based counterparts who didn't have a studio to anchor themselves geographically (or financially for that matter, making it possibly more likely that street based photographers might drift into other types of work). If working from a studio the photographer often kept a kamra-e-faoree standing outside on the street. Inside the shop, they used a variety of cameras from 35mm cameras to large format cameras (which were also known as the 'Indian camera') to make individual and family portraits.