The Best View of Heaven is from Hell

In January 2011, London’s Idea Generation Gallery opened The Best View of Heaven is from Hell, Bran’s first solo exhibition and his most significant body of photographic work.

While serving in Afghanistan, Bran had become fascinated by the Afghan National Police: the young men trained to keep order in Helmand while living inside the conflict themselves. In 2010, The Sunday Times Magazine commissioned him to return as a civilian photographer and document them.

Roses on rifles

Embedded with the police, Bran photographed their daily lives and the details that sat alongside the war: tea breaks between patrols, friendships, and the roses and stickers the men used to decorate their AK-47s.

The pictures revealed a culture largely unfamiliar to Western audiences, and one shaped by contradiction: a force meant to hold the country together, working in an environment of war, opium and strict religious law.

“I think there is a beautiful side to humans, however harsh the environment is.”
— Bran Symondson, speaking to AnOther

The exhibition

Bran curated the show himself from his own photographs. It ran from 28 January to 20 February 2011 at 11 Chance Street in Shoreditch and drew wide press attention, from photography and design titles to the arts pages.

The series also reached one of the world’s great photography collections. The curator of Sir Elton John’s collection showed him the work, and in 2015 he acquired a print of one photograph that had particularly caught his eye.

From photograph to sculpture

The images of decorated rifles became the starting point for everything that followed. Within a year, Bran was transforming decommissioned AK-47s himself, leading to AKA Peace in 2012 and, in time, The Art to Disarm.