Webinar Recording: Rebuilding in America After Afghanistan’s Fall

On November 15, 2022, the Pulitzer Center hosted a virtual conversation with Afghan photographer and refugee Omer Khan and grantees Valerie Plesch and Enrique Huaiquil. Plesch and Huaiquil explored and chronicled the challenges faced by Afghan evacuees resettling in the U.S. in the year since the Taliban takeover in their project After the Fall.

Khan, a freelance photographer from Kabul, Afghanistan, escaped with his family nine days after the Taliban entered Kabul and took control of the capital. Plesch and Huaiquil shared Khan’s experience building a new life in San Diego in the Pulitzer Center-supported story "There Is No More Life in Afghanistan.’ How One Refugee Photographer Is Rebuilding in San Diego."

Plesch is a freelance Vietnamese-Argentine American photojournalist, documentary photographer, and writer based in northern Virginia. Since early 2021, she has documented the growing Afghan community in the Washington, D.C., region, including the resettlement of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers before and after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Huaiquil is a Chilean-American Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and editor at AJ+, where he has covered a wide variety of issues, including the Central American caravans trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the aftermath of the earthquake in Puerto Rico, white supremacy in America, COVID-19 intensive care units, and immigration detention centers.

The discussion was moderated by Pulitzer Center Outreach Coordinator Mikaela Schmitt.