Uzbekistan

When I first received the commission to go to Uzbekistan, I immediately felt the elation one experiences when preparing to travel to a country and culture that is completely new to them. Yet as a photographer I knew that I had to keep those feelings in check and direct my focus towards producing images that would avoid the clichéd depictions that often result when an outsider attempts to document a foreign land for the first time.

As the scope of my work was quite specific ­– the task centered on taking portraits of highly skilled Uzbek craftspeople ­– I was able to quickly immerse myself into the milieu of these individuals who are responsible for creating important cultural artefacts with their hands. I discovered a shortcut by focusing in on details rather than becoming obsessed with capturing a superficial big picture view of the place I was visiting. Additionally, I was happy to revert back to doing portrait photography. In my experience, it is a genre of photography that pushes you the imagemaker to a moment of intense concentration that is practically impossible to attain in other instances of our work. It is a fleeting visual relationship. I believed that I didn’t need to know a great deal about these masters or the environment in which they worked to get what I wanted. I only needed to be guided to a peaceful moment of confrontation.

My guide in this journey was Jamshid Alimhanov from CCA. He was my fixer, helping sort out logistics and accompanying me as a translator. He was the filter that allowed me to understand the conversations around me and to ask questions. In truth, I found it somewhat liberating not being able to understand the language being spoken around me. Instead, I preferred to decipher visually the scenes I encountered during my stay in Uzbekistan.

Jamshid and I quickly became good friends. We were able to establish a good working relationship between us as well as with the subjects that I had to photograph. I was pleased with having found the ideal conditions in which to work. The master craftspeople magically stood before the camera and struck natural poses while looking directly at me with an air of quiet confidence. It might not seem odd but I’ve rarely encountered people who have possessed such a gift for looking straight into the camera lens with such serenity. In these moments, I must admit that the cultural barriers wound up being quite useful; we didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time making chitchat or trying to get to know each other a little. We simply gazed upon the other with a considerate curiosity. In between taking portraits of these talented individuals, where I would rely on my analogue Hasselblad camera, I explored the cities I was visiting and used my digital camera to make a sort of travelogue. During my travels, I kept searching for similar moments of quiet confrontation and transitory relationships with objects and scenes that I encountered. Again and again I found my gaze would fall on little particulars and I could slowly feel my field of view opening up to my surroundings.