Dushanbe has special place in my heart, it is a home that is becoming increasingly distant from me geographically, but also culturally and mentally. Paradoxically, it’s the place I’m most familiar with and the place that sparks my biggest interest and inspires me to learn more about the world. Most of these pictures are taken during my brief summer trips. In these photos, I try to depict Dushanbe’s permanence and fluidity- the connection to it’s complex Soviet past and the city’s and its people’s contemporary transformation. This transformation is obvious but is also difficult to grasp and lies in details of every-day life, it is tied to uniquely local factors and universally global processes, such as economic and cultural globalization, increasing social inequality and migration.
As Central Asia and its cities, people and cultures often exist beyond the radar of most of global and international media and even academia, this blog (and the gallery below) is a stroke on a big canvas of international image of Central Asia that remains largely empty, which is both saddening and hopeful.
