Photo Gallery: The Best View of Heaven is From Hell

"There's a similarity between being a soldier and a photographer. They are both looking intensely for the moment." Bran Symondson would know. He served with the British Army in Afghanistan before returning to document the world of the Afghan National Police. A less sensitive photographer might have alighted on the parallel between the action of a rifle barrel and a camera lens. But Symondson's pictures visit a perilous environment where, like that tiny butterfly in All Quiet on the Western Front, a fragile beauty survives and even prospers.

These images bring back a different story from the one delivered by newspapers and the broadcast media. The ANP is surely the most heavily funded police force in the world; caught between occupiers and occupied, it is also the most compromised. Symondson's account of the young men being trained to enforce the law in Afghanistan captures something of their ambiguous role. Some of its members have been responsible for killing British and American troops, but in the same ranks are men who decorate their weapons with ornamental motifs and feminise themselves with flowers.

This is a culture in which lack of access to women finds so-called “Chai boys” supplying physical favours to older soldiers in return for care and protection. Symondson’s pictures hint that such transactions are common in the ANP despite the fact that homosexuality is a capital offence. Perhaps his most arresting image is Afghan Catch 22, in which a soldier shows off a jar containing a mouse and a scorpion separated by a rose. It sums up, says Symondson, “a question often asked in a war zone: will your demise be through greed or ignorance, or are you just the poor bastard dropped into that situation?”

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1. Shell
2. A Chai boy on duty
3. ANP Rose
4. Chai boy
5. Chai boys
6. Afghan Catch 22
7. Nails and thorns
8. Rose lips

• The Best View of Heaven is From Hell by Bran Sydmondson at the Idea Generation Gallery until 20 February
• Find Afghanistan on theartsdesk