In Afghanistan, since July 2023, beauty salons have been closed by decree. Cutting hair, applying makeup, looking in the mirror — everyday gestures that are now forbidden. Women who worked as hairdressers or beauticians have been forced to continue their profession in secrecy, inside their homes, in silence. Others fled to Pakistan, living in precarious conditions, suspended between exile and uncertainty.
Silvia Alessi, a photographer and hairdresser, sought out these women not to portray them from the outside, but to stay close enough to leave room for their voices. In Pakistan, she photographed students at a beauty school founded specifically for Afghan refugees, run by an American hairdresser. Later, she managed to enter Afghanistan and visit the homes of women who still cut hair in secret, taking great risks but refusing to disappear.
What emerges is more than the story of a profession. It’s a quiet record of gestures that have become political, of beauty that insists on existing. Each face, each hand, each captured strand of hair bears witness to something that can no longer be spoken aloud.
At the end of every portrait session, Silvia invited each woman to write a message on a kite — a traditional Afghan symbol of freedom, play, and longing. Not all were able to do so: some kites remained blank, silent. Not by choice, but because illiteracy still marks one of the deepest forms of exclusion. And that silence, too, has a presence in this exhibition.
These portraits do not aim to explain. They offer a space for quiet attention — a chance to finally see the faces of those no longer allowed to be seen.
