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CENTRAL ASIA: DAILY LIFE IN MYTHIC TERRITORY
A EurasiaNet Photo Essay by Raffi Khatchadourian: 2/8/02
Central Asia has long been a place of legend. It was home
to the Golden Horde, the Silk Road, and a number of notorious
khans. It was the wild and uncharted battleground for 19th
century Great Britain and Russia in their "Great Game"
to dominate India. And it remained a remote and mysterious
place throughout much of the last century, cut off from foreign
contact as much by Soviet power as by its harsh geography.
Today, post-Soviet central Asia is still mythic territory
- perhaps most notably as the oil-rich backdrop to the recent
war in Afghanistan. However, these pictures, taken in Uzbekistan
during the final months of 2001, aim to demonstrate that the
region is not only one of legend, past and present, but also
one of the everyday - a place where people bake bread, fix
shoes, or enjoy the simple thrill of jumping on a trampoline
on a warm afternoon.
They were taken by Raffi Khatchadourian, a freelance print
journalist who recently traveled through Uzbekistan covering
war-related subjects.
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Posted February 8, 2002 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org
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The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website,
meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed
debate about the social, politcal and economic developments
of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the
Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New
York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation
that promotes the development of open societies around
the world by supporting educational, social, and legal
reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex
and controversial issues.
The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily
represent the position of the Open Society Institute
and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.
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