An emotional tale of an Afghan refugee teenager and his siblings who escaped their turmoiled homeland to rebuild their lives in France was the subject of French photojournalist Olivier Jobard’s talk “A 12-Year Documentary Bond” at the 10th Xposure International Photography Festival (Xposure) being held in Aljada, Sharjah.

Jobard, whose work focuses on migration and displacement, traced the origins of his exhibition “Our Afghan Family: A Memory of a Life Gone By” at Xposure 2026 to reveal the rare bond his family nurtured with the young Afghans. Blending a documentary approach with personal commitment, he narrated with photographs and videos the 12-year bond that began in a Paris park in 2012, when he met 13-year-old Ghorban who had travelled 7,000 kilometres alone to France illegally. He documented Gourban's journey of integration, including his struggles with French bureaucracy, his education, and his eventual sponsorship by Jobard and his wife. In August 2021, when Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Jobard guided Gourban in his effort to evacuate his younger siblings.

The photographer detailed the siblings' individual challenges and successes in adapting to a new culture, from learning French to finding work and pursuing education. His family becomes their extended family alleviating the pain of exile.

The project evolved to document the siblings' new lives and the speaker's return trip to Afghanistan to photograph their native village in Bamiyan province and their parents in their home and poppy fields, and create a family album for them. Hailing from a land where women were banned from education, jobs, and freedom under the Taliban rule, the future of the sisters Aziza and Sima in their adopted land seem bright as they find careers in a care home and a fashion house respectively.

He ended the narrative on a note of hope and resilience, “Little by little, the bird built its nest.”