August Sander While I was in Khorog at a USAID funded project at UCA, this man reminded me of so many portraits by August Sander. I had the work camera in my hand, a Canon with a cheapo lens, but I took the shot anyway. My head is so full of......
Langar On our trip we visited the town of Langar, just a handfull of houses on the Panj river. Afghanistan is to the right. The Pamirs are on the left. A German couple on tour bikes rides through on the way to China. They took 7 months off from work to......
The tiny village of Burunkul lies between Khorugh and Murghob in the Pamir region of Tajikistan, forgotten by civilization and clashing empires, bypassed by truckers neglected by time.
This meditative study of village of life is about sound and the passage of time, about life cycles and about technology, about the ebb and flow of civilizations and those who get lost on the cobwebs of the Silk Road. There is no narration. There are no interviews. There is nothing more that this one morning in the Pamirs.
Shot with a Sony DCR TRV27 on MiniDV. Edited in iMovie ’09. Original score composed in GarageBand.
Kulma Pass http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/kulma-pass/ "The Kulma Pass is a mountain pass, elevation 4,362 meters (14,311 feet), located on the border between China's autonomous region of Xinjiang and Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. Officially opened on May 25, 2004, the pass is on the only maintained road connecting the two nations, and is the......
Shadow of Rudaki [/caption] A statue of Rudaki stands in the middle of Rudaki park, near the presidential palace. A statue of Somoni stands not far away. Almost every city in Tajikistan has a massive statue of one of these two figures. Furthermore, almost every city, town and village has a statue of......
Darfur Wedding Here is an image I didn't include in the my Darfur project. I shot it after I had finished the final edit on the project, in fact I had already printed the exhibition prints. But Omar called me and invited me to a wedding, and I had to go.......
Langar Something just happened in Tajikistan. No one is quite sure what. I cherry bomb? A car bomb? An atomic bomb? In Dushanbe, everyone lives behind cement walls. Mine are 9 feet high. In Langar, people live in mud huts. "Pamiri houses" they are called. There are five pillars holding......
Window One of my colleagues is trying to get a flight into Dushanbe. He wants to come for just two days. Dushanbe doesn't really work that way unfortunately. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday you can come in from Istanbul, one flight a day. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you can fly in from......
Nurek Hydroelectric Power Plant The dam, the central feature of the Nurek Hydroelectric Power plant, stands 300 meters high, and supports nine hydroelectric generating units. The facility provides as much as 98 percent of Tajikistan's power (as of 1994). Designed as a pyramid straddling the Vakksh River canyon, the dam measures over 700......
August Sander While I was in Khorog at a USAID funded project at UCA, this man reminded me of so many portraits by August Sander. I had the work camera in my hand, a Canon with a cheapo lens, but I took the shot anyway. My head is so full of......
Window One of my colleagues is trying to get a flight into Dushanbe. He wants to come for just two days. Dushanbe doesn't really work that way unfortunately. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday you can come in from Istanbul, one flight a day. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you can fly in from......
Here are snapshots from my family vacation in Riga. I took my D700 and only my 20mm lens, and tried not to bore my wife and kid by stopping every two seconds to shoot.
Bus Stop At Garm Chaschma there were two hotels, neither of which were open. There is a dormitory, a sanatorium and a lodge, but good luck trying to track down someone who will give you a room; this is a privilege only the director has. If you know someone, I'm sure......
Best Photographers [/caption] Below is a list of artists who have inspired me, influenced me and challenged me Steve McCurry – international documentary photographer whose images from Afghanistan had a powerful influence on me. Like me, he specializes in travel photography from developing countries, usually inaccessible regions, and tries to find beauty......
Murgab mosque Lenin's statue stands in the center of town in Murgab, one of the highest cities in the Pamirs. A few mosques dot the town. There are no trees, and the security details warns us not to go out at night. "It seems normal," they say, "but really there are a......
Nurek Hydroelectric Power Plant The dam, the central feature of the Nurek Hydroelectric Power plant, stands 300 meters high, and supports nine hydroelectric generating units. The facility provides as much as 98 percent of Tajikistan's power (as of 1994). Designed as a pyramid straddling the Vakksh River canyon, the dam measures over 700......
The Pamirs We just came back from Iskander-Kol, only about four hours from Dushanbe. We drove the Niva, and made it through the "tunnel of death" alive! To get to the Pamirs however, you have to either drive 13-16 hours, or go to the airport and try to get on a flight.......
Khujand Last Friday, Pei and I were in Khujand...in the news...cide bomber has driven a car packed with explosives into a police office in Khujand, northern Taj...lives were taken, lives were lost...no one knows how many died, but it could have been me on my morning run, it could have......
Dushanbe is very quiet this time of year and all times of year. By six, everything is closed. Girls don’t walk the streets alone. They hold hands. Kids buy candy from a kiosk. Sometimes, the president’s motorcade roars by.
Wall There's a stadium behind the supermarket Poitaht. Everything in Dushanbe is named Poitaht, lest you forget that you're in the capital (poitaht means capital in Tajik). But when you're here, you can't forget that this is the seat of power - the BMW signals at you, reminds us that the......
Garm Towels The opening of the border crossing between China and Tajikistan can be seen as a sign of successful bilateral relations between two countries, strengthening their economical and political cooperation allowing for the rapidly growing Chinese economy to attract resources from Tajikistan, and Chinese goods to flow into Central Asian......
The windows of the passenger cars are mostly shattered, cracked, pockmarked with holes and scars. As the trains tremble through Uzbekistan, I am told the Uzbek children throw stones at the trains. Now, the windows are protected with metal grates and bars to guard from the flying stones. Many of the passengers are labor migrants, making their way to Russia to do seasonal unskilled work. Russia both hates these laborers, and needs them to survive. This was all one country once.
Rashtkala In Rashtkala, a carpet lay folded in the far room. We'd been looking for a carpet that size for weeks. It would fit perfectly in our living room. But I told Pei not to ask our host about the carpet, called a namad. Not to bargain for it, or......
Window One of my colleagues is trying to get a flight into Dushanbe. He wants to come for just two days. Dushanbe doesn't really work that way unfortunately. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday you can come in from Istanbul, one flight a day. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you can fly in from......
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August Sander While I was in Khorog at a USAID funded project at UCA, this man reminded me of so many portraits by August Sander. I had the work camera in my hand, a Canon with a cheapo lens, but I took the shot anyway. My head is so full of...... 
Langar On our trip we visited the town of Langar, just a handfull of houses on the Panj river. Afghanistan is to the right. The Pamirs are on the left. A German couple on tour bikes rides through on the way to China. They took 7 months off from work to...... 
