David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan

For the past seven years, David Guttenfelder has witnessed and documented the changing landscape of Afghanistan. Although mostly embedded with coalition troops, he has also covered the presidential elections, bodybuilders in Kabul, the state of Afghan prisons and daily life in the country. Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan.
U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 1st Battalion 5th Marines move in formation through farm fields after landing by helicopter in an overnight night air assault near the Taliban stronghold of Nawa in Afghanistan's Helmand province Thursday July 2, 2009. Thousands of U.S. Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages of southern Afghanistan Thursday in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize the country. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

U.S Marines from the 2nd MEB, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines battle Taliban fighters inside a mud walled compound near Now Zad in Afghanistan's Helmand province Saturday June 20, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines dismount from their vehicles during a battle against Taliban fighters near Now Zad in Afghanistan's Helmand province Saturday, June 20, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Josh Habib, far left, a 53-year-old translator for the U.S. Marines, speaks with Afghan villagers and two Marines in the Nawa district of Afghanistan's Helmand province on July 2, 2009. U.S. troops in Helmand say companies that recruit and hire military translators are sending linguists to southern Afghanistan who are too old to serve in a theater of combat or who do not have the right language skills, which puts them and the U.S. forces they work for at risk. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

The tattoo of a U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jordan Christie, of Washington, Ind., with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, is seen through a hole on the back of his uniform shirt, as he stands guard at a compound in the Nawa district of Afghanistan's Helmand province, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. His shirt was ripped because he had walked for several days with a backpack during an operation. None of the Marines had a change of shirt and were waiting for resupply. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Afghan women voters line up to cast their ballots at a mosque made into a polling station in Kabul on Thursday Aug. 20, 2009. Afghans voted under the shadow of Taliban threats of violence Thursday to choose their next president for a nation plagued by armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a feeble government nearly eight years after the U.S.-led invasion. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
SSG Alexander Pascual, right, from Kohala, Hawaii, from the U.S. Army First Battalion, 26th Infantry, patrols in the mountains of in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar Province Saturday, May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
An Afghan boy raises his clothes for U.S. Marines, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, so that he can be checked before passing by a military position near the town of Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Thursday, May 1, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
The helmets, weapons, dogtags and boots of two fallen U.S. Marines stand at the end of a ceremony in their honor at Camp Bastion, in southern Afghanistan on April 22, 2008. 1st Sgt. Luke Mercardante, 35, of Athens, Ga, and Cpl. Kyle W. Wilks, 24, of Rogers, Ark. died on April 15 when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, one with the names of fallen colleagues tattooed on his back, bathe at a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Saturday, April 26, 2008. Some 3,500 U.S. Marines arrived in Afghanistan to help NATO's increasingly bloody fight against the Taliban. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit listen to their commanding officer as they prepare to leave in convoy from a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Monday April 28, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
U.S. Marines, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, take positions on a berm during a fire fight with Taliban positions near the town of Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan Friday May 2, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
U.S. Marines, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, return fire on Taliban positions near the town of Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan on May 2, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
British troops from 13th Air Assault Regiment and a U.S. Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, forth from right, watch as palettes of water bottles drift to the ground on parachutes as NATO planes make a resupply airdrop to a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan on April 26, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Two Afghan women, wearing traditional blue burquas, look out from the doorway of their home during a snow storm in Kabul on Sunday Feb. 18, 2007. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
An Afghan woman walks along a snowy path in her Kabul neighborhood, Afghnaistan, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2007. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Afghan men and boys gather on a Kabul hillside for a kite flying competition at dusk on Friday, March 10, 2006. Kite flying, once banned by the ruling Taliban regime, is a popular spring pastime. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
With plastic covering huge holes in walls of a civil war-damaged abandoned factory, now used as a gym, a young Afghan man exercises with a barbell in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 17, 2006. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Canadian troops from Alpha company, task force 306, and Afghan National Army members take rooftop positions in a rural area of Afghanistan's Kandahar province during a joint operation to search for Taliban fighters Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Canadian soldiers look for roadside bombs in a corn field as they guard a Canadian engineer road construction project near the Mas'um Ghar base in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan on Nov. 22, 2006. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
Afghans visit the tomb of the father of Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shah on a hill over looking Kabul city scape, Saturday March 5, 2005. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

An Afghan bread shop worker sells traditional Afghan flat breads to a customer in central Kabul Sunday May 8, 2005. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
An Afghan boy herds his sheep past the destroyed former Afghan King's Palace in Kabul next to the site of the planned new Parliament building Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005. Afghanistan's parliamentary elections will be held on September 18. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

An elderly Afghan man visits the tomb of rebel commander Ahmed Shah Masood in Panshir to pay his respects on the 4th anniversary of Masood's assassination Saturday Sept. 10, 2005. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
People run away as an Afghan military helicopter crashes and catches fire in the Panjshir Valley after a memorial ceremony marking the 4th anniversary of rebel commander Ahmed Shah Masood Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005. Two passengers were injured, but no one was killed in the helicopter which was carrying military and government officials from the memorial events. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
A boy looks down from a hole in the roof at another on the stairs of a Soviet-built cultural center in Kabul, Afghanistan where hundreds of Afghan people, who have returned from years of exile in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, now live Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005. With the first parliamentary elections after a quarter century of war to be held on Sept. 18, denizens of refugees are looking to the vote for a way out of a life of squalid limbo. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
An Afghan girl plays with a clothes line where her family lives in a Soviet-built theater in Kabul, Afghanistan where Afghan people, who have returned from years of exile in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, now live Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005. With the first parliamentary elections after a quarter century of war to be held on Sept. 18, denizens of refugees are looking to the vote for a way out of a life of squalid limbo. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Afghan anti-Taliban fighters advance tanks to the front line along the White Mountains of Tora Bora in northeastern Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 10, 2001. With U.S. fighter jets streaking overhead, anti-Taliban forces firing tanks and anti-aircraft guns Monday seized a key ridge near one of Osama bin Laden's hideouts in the majestic mountains near Pakistan. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)