Robert Nickelsberg worked as a Time magazine contract photographer for nearly 30 years, specializing in political and cultural change in developing countries. He is the author of Afghanistan – A Distant War, published in 2013 by Prestel, which represents his 25 years of work in Afghanistan. Nickelsberg’s second book, Afghanistan’s Heritage: Restoring Spirit and Stone, produced in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State, was published in English, Dari, and Pashto in May 2018. In April 2024, Kehrer Verlag published Legacy of Lies, El Salvador 1981-1984, a collection of black and white images shot during the civil war in El Salvador, 1981-1984, for Time magazine. Nickelsberg lives in Brooklyn, New York.
This collection of photographs offers a visual historical record of the first years of El Salvador’s civil war, the foundational period forcing Salvadoran civilians to flee north that created the chaos and confusion at the border with Mexico and the United States.
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