Photographer Daniel Malikyar reflects on one of his favourite images, a portrait of a young girl named Shargha calmly milking a large yak in the remote Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan. Born in Los Angeles to a family that left Afghanistan in 1979 just before the Soviet invasion, Malikyar set out to counter the reductive way Afghans are typically portrayed in Western media — as either villains or victims — and to instead capture their everyday lives with dignity and honesty.

The photograph was taken in an isolated, seldom-visited village home to a small community of Kyrgyz nomads, who relocate three or four times a year to follow grazing land for their livestock. Malikyar, who has photographed more than 55 countries and made repeated trips to Afghanistan since 2018, credits his fluent Dari with helping him gain trust and collaboration from his subjects. He notes cultural details such as women wearing red veils before marriage and white ones after, and describes photographing children from a low angle to lend them a heroic, larger-than-life quality. His book, Afghanistan, is published by teNeues on 4 August.