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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the story of Andre Camara, who photographed a favela drug war in the mid 80s.

Take away: criminals are vain too.

For those who don’t know: the film City of God is based on this, and it’s a great movie. One of my all-time favorites. The directing, acting photography and storytelling are all very well done. Worth anyone’s time.

I have to rewatch what, been a decade.

From 2002. It's crazy how happy I was to have 360p mpeg rips back then. I'm gonna have to re-pirate it tonight.

I could watch it once a year, indefinitely.

Same thing with the Taliban: https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2021/10/4/taliban-portraits

By the way, there is a Taliban who looks exactly like Christian Bale: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/976/cpsprodpb/13EB0/pr...

Why wouldn't an up and coming government administration want to take professional photos and engage in all the other trappings of legitimate government?

One interesting thing about the situation is that Islamic religious authorities used to have conflicting views on permissibility of portraits and depictions of living beings in general, which is also why so much Islamic medieval art is abstract. Abstract art was religiously safe.

Ubiquity and practicality of photography basically destroyed the restrictive side of the conflict. As you can see, even the Taliban seems to be on the permissive side now.

(IIRC some of the most extreme forms of Islamic State in Syria/Iraq tried to ban photography of humans and animals.)

I agree. Syria’s new leader, a former Al Qaeda, put on a suit and got a major glow up: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250508-syrian-interim-preside.... Macron embraced him warmly. News orgs gave him positive coverage. Then Trump said what everyone was thinking: he looks pretty good in a suit: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ahmad-a....

I have no idea why you’re being downvoted, since what you say is objectively true.

Yup, they want to be documented. Tale as old as time.

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