300m (SIGNED)

Ben Brody
300m (SIGNED)

Photographs: Ben Brody

Publisher: Mass Books

58 pages

Year: 2022

ISBN: 9780997216349

Comments: Leporello bound in red cardboard closed with an elastic band, 18 x 15,4 cm, b&w photographs printed on both sides, design by Kummer & Hermann. Signed by Ben Brody.

Ben Brody’s latest photobook 300mis a panoramic journey through the height of the American war in Afghanistan, framed in the context of the fall of Kabul and the ties that remain with friends and colleagues who currently live under Taliban rule.

Designed by Kummer & Herrman, 300m is an innovative, tactile accordion book that invites multiple readings and interactions. The accordion can be paged through like a traditional photobook, viewed as a shifting tableau of 360-degree panoramics made with a toy camera, where the reader can create their own compositions. Laid out end-to-end, the accordion is nearly 16 feet long and is printed on both sides.

Inside the poppy-red cover, a WhatsApp chat from Brody’s friend and interpreter in Afghanistan details his harrowing journey with his family to the gates of Kabul’s airport while a group of veterans in the US attempted to navigate them through the desperate crowds in what came to be known as the ‘Digital Dunkirk.’

Drawing a line between photographs of the 2011 opium harvest in Kandahar, and the fall of the Afghan government ten years later, 300m is also an epilogue to Brody’s critically-acclaimed 2019 photobook Attention Servicemember.