---
title: "From L.A. Subcultures to Remote Afghanistan: Photographer Daniel Malikyar"
description: "The Los Angeles–based, Afghan-American photographer made his name documenting the city's overlooked communities. Now, with a book of his Afghanistan work due this year, he turns the same patient eye on the country his family left behind."
category: "World"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/world
author: "Brandon Cole"
published: 2026-06-30T15:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-30T15:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/from-la-subcultures-to-remote-afghanistan-photographer-daniel-malikyar
tags: ["photography", "Afghanistan", "Los Angeles", "diaspora", "documentary", "arts"]
---
# From L.A. Subcultures to Remote Afghanistan: Photographer Daniel Malikyar

The Los Angeles–based, Afghan-American photographer made his name documenting the city's overlooked communities. Now, with a book of his Afghanistan work due this year, he turns the same patient eye on the country his family left behind.

Daniel Malikyar grew up in Los Angeles holding two pictures of Afghanistan at once: the country of headlines and rubble, and the country of his family's memory.

## A grandfather's influence

By his own account, [related to Hypebeast](https://hypebeast.com/2023/6/through-the-lens-daniel-malikyar), Malikyar was reaching for a camera as a young boy, shaped by a grandfather who had worked as a journalist and believed images could honor a culture rather than only record its wounds. At 19 he was named one of the youngest official Fujifilm ambassador-photographers — a marker of an editorial instinct that arrived early.

## The Los Angeles years

Los Angeles was his training ground. Documenting skate culture as a teenager sharpened his timing for the unrepeatable moment, a discipline that carried into a broader body of subculture and documentary work. Among the more unusual projects was a series on a Central Valley community of self-ordained "Weed Nuns," an activist collective centered on plant-based medicine — the kind of human-scaled, slightly improbable assignment he has said he lives for. He co-founded a production company and later opened a Los Angeles photography gallery, balancing commercial campaigns with self-initiated documentary projects.

## Going back

In 2018 Malikyar made his first sustained effort to photograph Afghanistan, a project focused on the textures of ordinary life rather than its emergencies. That work is now expanding into a book: a worldwide rights deal announced in late 2025 will bring his Afghanistan photographs to print through the publisher teNeues, [his agency said](https://transatlanticagency.com/2025/12/18/deal-news-daniel-malikyars-afghanistan/), with an exhibition and a film also planned. His representatives describe the project as a record made "during a rare window when everyday life across the country could be documented from within" — a phrase that gestures, carefully, at how narrow that window has become.

## The through-line

What links the skate parks of Los Angeles to the bazaars of Afghanistan, in Malikyar's telling, is method more than geography: patience, trust and a willingness to surrender to chance encounters. "Build that bond in those initial seconds," he has said of gaining a subject's trust — "that's where the magic happens." At 30, the Los Angeles photographer is releasing what may be the most personal work of his career, rooted in the place that gave his grandfather a reason to pick up a camera in the first place.

## Sources

- [Through the lens: Daniel Malikyar](https://hypebeast.com/2023/6/through-the-lens-daniel-malikyar)
- [Deal news: Daniel Malikyar's 'Afghanistan'](https://transatlanticagency.com/2025/12/18/deal-news-daniel-malikyars-afghanistan/)
- [Photographer Daniel Malikyar: from LA subculture to remote Afghanistan](https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/arts24/20260630-photographer-daniel-malikyar-from-la-subculture-to-remote-afghanistan)