- Sharbat Gula (born c. 1972) is an Afghan woman of Pashtun ethnicity. Her face became famous as a cover photograph on a 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Gula was orphaned during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan. While at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984, her picture was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time.
Although her name was not known, her picture, titled "Afghan Girl," appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic magazine. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named as "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the magazine.
Susan