Andrew Quilty

‘Afghanistan’ the film, is a documentary about photojournalist and author Andrew Quilty. It showcases his time spent documenting the life of Afghan civilians living on the periphery of war. Film: Director & Producer: Ellie Waterhouse @elliewaterhouse_ Photographer: Andrew Quilty @andrewquilty Editor & Producer: Jimmi James Wright @jimmijamesagram Cinematography: Australia Jimmi James Wright @liberteportraits Afghanistan Jordan Byron @jordan_byron Jacob Bryant @jacobsbryant Andrew Quilty @andrewquilty Executive Producer: Will Alexander @wilbawild Original Score: Shams Sanam (Afghanistan) @shams_sanam_official Johnny Green (Australia) @johnny_gr33n Lighting: @sam_m_armstrong IO and Online Editor: Liam McConville Music: Zahra Elham @zahra.elham.official Heckler Sound: Executive Producer: Bonnie Law @hecklersound Sound Editor and Re-recording mixer: Dave Robertson @cameo_culture Location: Selena Simpson @makeprints_with_selena & Franca Turrin Equipment: Sonny Costin, @thefront118 Sponsored by @hecklerhq The incredible team at Museums & Galleries Queensland: @magsqld Rebekah Butler, Executive Director, Andrea Higgins, Exhibition Coordinator, Sharna Barker, Exhibition Program Officer. This film travels alongside the touring Exhibition ‘Afghanistan’: @magsqld @artsqueensland @creative.australia @ausgovarts @humanrightswatchau @humanrightswatch ‘Afghanistan’ - a profoundly moving and compelling exhibition by award-winning photojournalist and author Andrew Quilty. Living in Kabul for almost a decade, from 2013 to 2022, Quilty’s powerful images capture the complex tapestry of daily life throughout the country. This exhibition stands as a deeply personal narrative—an intimate glimpse into a nation too often defined by conflict. ‘Afghanistan’ is a Museums & Galleries Queensland (M&G QLD) touring exhibition presented in partnership with photojournalist and author Andrew Quilty, and curator Ellie Waterhouse. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program. It is proudly sponsored by Heckler and supported by Human Rights Watch.

Brandan Koschel, who made an unscheduled anti-Semitic speech on January 26 this year, at Australia Day rally in Sydney, was on February 18 the first person to be convicted under new anti-hate speech laws introduced in NSW in 2025 in the wake of a spate of anti-Semitic vandalism and arson attacks. Whether it was intentional, fitting or ironic, Koschel was convicted under some of the very laws he was protesting. Photographs, video and text: @andrewquilty / @vu_photo

Anti-Isaac Herzog protest in Sydney on Monday 9 February. Photos and text: @andrewquilty / @vu_photo .

'Afghanistan' is a Museums & Galleries Queensland touring exhibition presented in partnership with photojournalist and author @andrewquilty , and curator @elliewaterhouse_ , supported by Human Rights Watch. ‘Afghanistan’ is a profoundly moving and powerful exhibition of photographs by Quilty, captured during his years living in the Afghan capital, Kabul, from 2013 to 2022. 'Afghanistan' offers a personal and evocative narrative, exploring the country’s rich culture against the backdrop of war and conflict. At a symposium to launch the exhibition, Daniela Gavshon, Australia director Human Rights Watch, was in conversation with Andrew Quilty on western intervention in conflict‑affected countries and its ongoing impacts.

“Afghanistan”, the first exhibition I’ve had in Australia in more than ten years, opens in Logan, Queensland, tomorrow night, Friday 30 January. Four years ago – three months after I left Kabul and five months after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took control – I was halfway through writing a book on the subject when I met @elliewaterhouse_ When I told Ellie I was writing a book, she asked whether I was planning to exhibit the photographs I’d shot over what had been nearly a decade living in Afghanistan. I shrugged. But Ellie, who had worked in commercial galleries in Sydney, as an educator, and as a volunteer for Skateistan, the NGO founded in Kabul by Australian skateboarder @skateistanollie , said to let her know if it was ever something I was interested in considering. A year and a bit later, after wading through 320,000 photographs and publishing 180 of them in my second book, This is Afghanistan: 2014-2021, I thought I’d give Ellie a call. I’ve since discovered that my definition of “exhibit” is different to Ellie’s by orders of magnitude. To date, Ellie’s hundreds of hours, her commitment, passion, indefatigable energy, persistence and expertise has cost me the grand total of one copy of my book and maybe a schooner. Nearly three years after that phone call and Ellie has not only curated an exhibition of 61 photographs, but with @magsqld , put together a program that will see the show travel to ten locations across eastern Australia over three years, with an education kit, photography workshops, a live music performance and a half hour film looking at the stories behind some of the photographs. The exhibition opens at Logan Art Gallery 6-8pm Friday 30 Jan. and runs until 4 April, before travelling to Noosa. For more info, and the full touring schedule, see link in bio. Many to thank, including: @artsqueensland @creative.australia @ausgovarts @humanrightswatchau   @humanrightswatch @logancity.council @hecklerhq Music over the BTS of the film shoot by @shams_sanam_official Cinematography: @jimmijamesagram Lighting: @sam_m_armstrong

Brandan Koshel, believed to be a former member of the National Socialist Network, has been denied bail and will appear in court in early February on charges of publicly inciting hatred. Photos and text: @andrewquilty .

On Sunday evening, thousands gathered for a memorial a week after 15 people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack carried out by father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram, inspired by the so-called Islamic State, targeting a celebration for the first day of of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach. 21 December 2025. Photos: @andrewquilty / @guardianaustralia . Words: @andrewquilty .

I wasn’t familiar with Wissam Haddad at the time of the March for Humanity on 3 August this year, but, followed by around a dozen acolytes carrying black and white flags bearing the Islamic declaration of faith (not strictly the Islamic State flag, but the similarity, given the terror group’s existence, makes the inference to difficult to deny) and sweatshirts with slogans that barely held to the confines of hate crime legislation enacted earlier in the year, he stood out from the hundreds of thousands of others marching in support of Palestine across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Where the vast majority of protestors came with a political message, Haddad’s group’s message was overtly ideological. When I spoke to him, he was affable but evasive. Because of the way they wore their beards, I asked one of his followers whether they were Salafists; he denied that they were. When I asked which school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence they followed, he looked confused and demurred. I also pointed out what strange bed-fellows their group was with their hundreds of thousands of fellow marchers, many of whom outwardly espoused the kinds of “progressive” identities that are antithetical to fundamentalist Islamic beliefs. Critics of the pro-Palestine/anti-Israeli-administration movement claim that the crowd that day was littered with marchers whose motivations appeared antisemitic. Although one’s inner motivation is almost impossible to know, the vast majority of marchers that day confined their vitriol to the Israeli administration and its policies toward Palestine. Haddad’s group was so anomalous that I chose not to include his photo in the selection I posted here, from that day, because, I felt, it would have provided a less accurate representation of the overall picture, as I saw it. Haddad’s presence at the March for Humanity and his links, however tenuous, to Naveed Akram provide, on the one hand, a neat and simple correlation between anti-Israel-administration sentiment and outright anti-Semitic terrorism like that carried out by the Akram father and son in Bondi last weekend. The reality, of course, is far more complex. 3 August 2025. Photo: @andrewquilty .

Eastern suburbs Sydney. 5 August 2025. Anyone know the surfer? Photo: @andrewquilty / @vu_photo

After a march by between 90,000 & 300,000 across Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Gaza on Sunday 3 August, & questions about the justification and motives of marchers in my previous post, here are four sections from intl. conventions relevant to the situation in Gaza, trimmed for space but not for context. Convention on… Genocide Article II [G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group… : (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ... Geneva Convention (IV), 1949. Article 33 - Individual responsibility, collective penalties… No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties & likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited... Geneva Conventions - Additional Protocol 1, 1977 Article 51 - Protection of the civilian population 4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. 5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete & direct military advantage anticipated. Geneva Conventions - Additional Protocol 1, 1977 Article 54 - Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian pop. 1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited. 2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy... or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas…, drinking water installations… [etc], for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive. Photos: @andrewquilty / @vu_photo

Today, NSW Police estimated 90,000* people marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Gaza, where a similar number are believed to have been killed by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in retaliation for Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and where an ongoing partial Israeli aid blockade to the territory is causing mass starvation and further compounding the increasingly perilous humanitarian situation, seemingly by IDF-design. The March for Humanity, organised by @palestineactiongroup (PAG), was only permitted to go ahead yesterday when the NSW Supreme Court ruled in favour of the protestors after police had sought to deny their application. Organisers called for sanctions against Israel, an end to the export of Australian-manufactured war materiel, an immediate ceasefire between the IDF and Hamas, and an end to the Israeli blockade of aid to Gaza. Amongst the protestors was Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose appearance was one of his first since he was released from prison in the UK and flown to Australia following a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department in June 2024. While organisers had expected 50,000 to attend, despite at times torrential rain, the mass of marchers stretched from Wynyard to Milsons Point train stations, until police sent location-specific text messages asking protestors to stop and wait, before turning around and returning to the city, as there was not enough room to accomodate the tens of thousands on the northern side of the bridge. Photos: @andrewquilty / @vu_photo *I’d guess this figure would be on the low side.

Queenscliff Bombie. Queenscliff, Sydney. Surfer unknown. 18.4.2025. Photo: @andrewquilty