Beyond lens and sketch : Andrea Bruno in Afghanistan, between drawing and photography

Throughout his long and distinguished career, during which he was deeply involved in architectural conservation, the architect Andrea Bruno (1931–2025) cultivated an unconventional dialogue with built heritage, combining careful preservation with a deliberate and functional repossession of it. He developed an approach in which transformation was essential for the survival of historical structures, rather than a threat to their integrity . From the 1960s his lasting collaborations with UNESCO, took him to sites across the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia, with Afghanistan at the center. For more than five decades, Bruno carried out surveys, conservation projects and advisory missions at landmarks such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the Minaret of Jam and the Citadel of Herat. These interventions unfolded in contexts of political instability, conflicts and iconoclastic violence, where the protection of monuments is inseparable from broader questions of social resilience and cultural rights. In 2019, the extensive documentation produced over this trajectory - including drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, technical reports - was donated by the architect to the Università Iuav di Venezia, where it is now preserved and made accessible as the Andrea Bruno Fund within the Archivio Progetti. Among its sections, the materials dedicated to Afghanistan, largely digitised, stand out for its breadth and coherence, tracing Bruno’s long-term relationship with a country repeatedly affected by wars and geopolitical tensions. The following paragraphs highlight two complementary tools that accompanied the architect on each mission: his travel sketchbooks and cameras. From the 1960s onwards, Andrea Bruno travelled with a notebook in one hand and a camera in the other, using drawing and photography as intertwined ways of understanding and engaging with heritage in periods of conflict and instability.