The Photographer documents a trip into Afghanistan made 20 years ago by a Medicin Sans Frontiers team to treat the sick and wounded during the Soviet invasion. Didier Lefevre went on the trip to photograph it, stayed with the mission in Afghanistan for a month and then left them and attempted to return to Pakistan with a caravan, which turned out to be a disaster that nearly killed him.
I love documentary graphic novels. but it seems like this is an area where a lot of the artists, authors and publishers don't really understand comics. What I mean by that is that in comics the words and the pictures should each add something to every panel - they should not contain exactly the same information. While The Photographer suffers from this to some extent (1/3 of all panels in the book are of Didier standing next to a horse on a mountain), the book is saved by two things. The comic panels remind us visually every minute of the terrain of Afghanistan and the journey, which is vital to the story. And the whole story is brought to life by Didier's photographs, which are amazing. It isn't a great comic, but it is a great story.
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