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The odd device draws curious onlookers everywhere. From the outside, it resembles little more than a large black box on a tripod. Inside lies its magic: a hand-made wooden camera and darkroom in one. As a small crowd gathers around the box camera, images of beauty and of hardship ripple to life from its dark interior: a family enjoying an outing in a swan boat on a lake; child laborers toiling in brick factories; women erased by all-covering veils; armed young men with fire in their eyes. Sitting for a portrait in a war-scarred Afghan village, a Taliban fighter remarks: “Life is much more joyful now.” For a young woman in the Afghan capital, forced out of education because of her gender, the opposite is true: “My life is like a prisoner, like a bird in a cage.” The images underscore how in the two years the Taliban returned to power, life has changed dramatically for many Afghans. Music, movies, dancing and performances are banned. Women are again excluded from nearly all public life, including education and all but a few professions, they are the ones who obviously suffer the most, who went from being able to walk freely to living in hiding.