Afghan casualties amounted to 12,700 dead and wounded as against 15,600 on the British side. Burke's photographs show none of this bloodshed; his equipment was heavy and cumbersome, the Afghan campaign depended on route marches across hard terrain, and in any case his pictures were intended as cheerful mementoes of an imperial feat of arms in an exotic, faraway country. But he was a gifted photographer with an eye for a wide range of subjects – landscapes as well as soldiers and tribesmen – and his pictures inspired Norfolk to follow in his footsteps, not yard by yard and frame for frame, but to see how far the encounter between the occupying army and the native population had repeated itself. That's best left to the pictures to say, but there is at least one innovation that can be understood as evidence of progress. Women appear in Norfolk's pictures, including a female basketball team. No Muslim woman appears in Burke's; the only women he photographed were Hindu "Nautch" girls, imported to entertain Afghanistan's rulers and their feudal courts.

When Norfolk talked to British soldiers on his trip last year, none seemed to know of the previous occupations (there was a third Anglo-Afghan war in 1919) and were "surprised and rather interested" when he told them the history. Afghanis, on the other hand, knew all about Ayub Khan's victory at Maiwand, which in Pashtun legend is the equivalent of Trafalgar or Waterloo.