Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Zalmaï Ahad was forced into exile in 1980, at the age of 15, after the Soviet invasion of his country. After crossing the Pakistani border to Peshawar, he travelled to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was recognised as a refugee. In 1994 he became a Swiss citizen. Following his passion for photography, which he discovered very early in life, he pursued combined studies at both the school of photography of Lausanne and at the Professional Photography Training Center of Yverdon.

In 1989, he began to work as a freelance photographer, travelling around the world from Tibet to the Sudan, from Cuba (to cover the 40th anniversary of the Cuban revolution) to Central Africa (to cover the fate of the pygmies following extensive deforestation of their land). His work has been published in several magazines and newspapers including the New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, Le Temps, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, La Repubblica, ICRC Magazine, Human Rights Watch and Refugees Magazine, a quarterly publication of UNHCR. His first photo book, Eclipse (Umbrage, 2002) deals with the theme of exile and the plight of the uprooted in different corners of the planet: Cuba, India, Mali, the Philippines, Indonesia and Egypt.

The originality and remarkable quality of Zalmaï's work has earned him several national and international prizes including the World Press Joop Swart Master Class. Zalmaï is a member of the Association Focale, a cooperative of photographers based in Nyon, Switzerland. At present, he lives and works between New York and Geneva.

A traditional user of black and white photos, Zalmaï explains in his book why, for the first time, he chose colour: "I felt that now, after such a long time, there was hope again for Afghanistan. It seemed to me that colours were returning and that they would be those of a peaceful country. And so I set out to find this hope, with — for the first time — colour film in my camera."

Through the "Return, Afghanistan" exhibition and his book, Zalmaï would like to remind the world of the plight and courage of millions of refugees who have returned to Afghanistan, and of their huge need for assistance in a country devastated by war and now just beginning to reconstruct itself.

As Zalmaï says, "My project tries to capture the determination and the courage of a people that has rarely known peace, their optimism against all odds, and their worry that Afghanistan could still return to the nightmarish condition it is trying to escape."