Freedom's Edge
A true story of a young woman photographer's Journey and Imprisonment in Afghanistan.

"AFGHANISTAN: ...a landlocked country enclosed by a stupendously wild geography, centrally positioned between the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and the Far East... Coined the 'roundabout civilization' Afghanistan has been the centre of empires... and for the reception and diffusion of religious and artistic forms all over Asia; from ancient Mother Goddess cults of the Upper Palaeolithic through to Classical, Buddhist, Hindu, and the present Islamic period. It was here that the Vedas were composed; where Buddhism knew its greatest flowering; and where legend speaks of a...concentration of 'knowledge' or 'mystery'...held within this land and its peoples..." The year is 1978. A rebel, artist, and explorer (in all senses of the word) at the beginning of 23 year old Victoria's journey into Afghanistan in February of 1978, the country - a breath-taking array of mountains, valleys, deserts, and home to a mix of cultures, religions and peoples that traced their origins to some 50,000 years BC - was a mecca for travellers of every ilk. Ruled by the dictator, Mohammed Daoud Khan, the Country was seemingly at peace and prospering. Had Daoud upheld the maxim of his exiled cousin, King Zahir Shah (and that of predecessors) of 'the right to freedom and dignity for every individual ', two hundred years of Afghanistan's internal peace might have continued, and Afghanistan retained its position as one of the world's MUST VISIT cultural and world-wonder destinations to this day. As it was, the Dictator suppressed democratic freedoms, while playing dice with two ambitious Superpowers - the USSR and USA - eager to find a chink in Afghanistan's armour. Arguably the only Western witness to the USSR's manipulation of a populace (via the SAUR Revolution) and subsequent 'theft by stealth' of Afghanistan - which subsequently led to the prolonged war and decimation of one of the world's most extraordinary countries.