Photographer Donovan Wylie spent six weeks in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan, an arid region of mountains and desert plains.

Wylie, who works for Magnum, the international photographic co-operative formed by Henri Cartier Bresson in 1947, was shooting temporary military bases operated by the Canadian contingent of the International Security Assistance Force.

Known as Forward Observation Bases, the sites are strategically placed, often in locations of ancient defence posts built during previous conflicts.

The result of his assignment, Outposts: Donovan Wylie, Bradford Fellowship 2010-11, can be seen at the National Media Museum (NMM) from October 1 to February 19.

The NMM and Imperial War Museum collaborated to embed Wylie with the Canadian military, making him the first Imperial War Museum official photographer to work in a war zone since the end of the 1914-18 War.

Philippa Wright, NMM curator of photographs, said: “Despite the fact that he does not class himself as a war photographer, his images in Outposts provide a revealing and visually compelling record of war.”

Belfast-born Wylie is fascinated by the way conflict shapes environments and lives. His earlier work was influenced by the war in Northern Ireland that claimed so many lives from 1969 until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Outposts is Wylie’s second solo exhibition at the NMM, following Falling Ground in 1998.

The exhibition forms part of the Ways of Looking festival of photography in Bradford from October 1 to 30.

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