A girl cools off in Bishkek’s central Ala-Too Square on Saturday. Getting drenched in the city’s fountains is a favorite summer pastime for kids in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, though this one seems to have gotten wetter than she’d bargained for.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Several thousand Georgians attended the Didgoroba festival in the region of Kvemo Kartli near the capital Tbilisi on August 12. The annual gathering on the field of Didgori celebrates a 12th Century victory of Georgian troops against Seljuk Turks.
Playing around an armored military vehicle, many of the people attending wore caps and T-shirts with inscriptions "I ♥ Georgia" and "5", a pre-election campaign slogan and the ballot paper number respectively for the United National Movement, Georgia's ruling party.
This year's gathering appeared to have a more political slant, as police controlling access to the field only allowed "those on the list" to enter, with no mention of what the list was. At one point police stopped, about five kilometers from the Didgori field, several minibuses with young activists from government opposition party Georgian Dream. Several folk art groups refused to perform at the festival as a protest against strong political support of Georgia President Mikheal Saakashvili, who made a speech at the gathering.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
Young Tbilisians explore the historic mountain village of Shatili during the annual Shatiloba folk festival on August 4. Based in Georgia’s highlands region of Khevsureti near Chechnya, the festival features horse races by locals, traditional music, and folk dancers.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
Newlyweds in post-Soviet Central Asia hold some traditions especially dear. Before gathering with friends and family for the big feast, a wedding party will likely hit their city’s hot spots, stopping at scenic parks and important monuments (often including a WWII memorial) for a toast, a photo session, and maybe a quick dance. Their procession of cars, festooned with ribbons and often led by a hired limo, will race around town, usually getting no more than a wink from the sympathetic traffic police.
Saturdays are popular wedding days in Osh, with several parties descending on the same park, enjoying music piped in from a nearby café. Here, a few Saturdays ago, a bride celebrates in a park named for Alimbek Datka, a local 19th-century feudal lord.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
An Alawite woman prays in a shrine in Samandag, Turkey on July 13. Alawites, who in Turkey are sometimes called Arab Alevis, compose a small minority in the country. Alawites in Samandag said that the support of Turkey's ruling Sunni Justice and Development Party (AKP) for Syrian rebels seeking to topple the Alawite-dominated Assad regime in Syria has marginalized Alawites in the country.
Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.
Residents in the Caucasus breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh voted in elections for the de-facto president on July 20.
EurasiaNet.org contributing photojournalist Anahit Hayrapetyan, who lives in Yerevan, is originally from a village in Nagorno Karabakh. She returned to her native region to document the de-facto presidential election. This is a collection of Polaroid portraits taken of Nagorno Karabakh residents before and on election day.
More than 30 artists from across Central Asia and from as far away as France and Turkey gathered on the southern shore of Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk-Kul earlier this month to share some creative juices. Besides painting and sculpture, they produced installations and performances, and undertook joint photography shoots.
Organized by the Bishkek-based NGO B-Art Center, the weeklong “Nomadic Art Camp” culminated in a July 13 exhibition at the National Art Museum in Bishkek and a jam session at the Hyatt Hotel featuring local and foreign musicians (including yours truly, Kide from the Jeans Community).
Shaarbek Amankul, head of B-Art Center, told EurasiaNet.org that he has organized the Nomadic Art Camp annually since 2009. The main idea, Amankul said, is to recognize Central Asia’s cultural heritage as a source of inspiration for contemporary art.
“Bio-cultural Heritage and Diversity” was the theme this year. Participants explored how to fuse traditional Central Asian materials, such as felt and wood, with modern ideas.
For example, Tajik artist Daler Mikhtodzhov combined his interests in the region’s ecology and spirituality in a performance, Stairway to Heaven. In the YouTube video, he appears reading suras – Koranic verses – inside a wooden cage. But the cage is not just a trap: It’s actually a ladder, the rungs wrapped in yesterday’s newspapers. Later, a male performer covered in black oil contemplates escape.
Organizers plan to take the exhibits on a road trip around Kyrgyzstan and distribute a catalogue internationally.
Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.
Thousands of men filled every nook and cranny of the Haji Yacoub Mosque in Dushanbe, Tajikistan's capital, for the first day of Ramadan on July 20. This year, the holy month began on a Friday, Muslims' main day of prayer.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Iuza Beradze, a 71-year-old veteran folk singer, jokes as his wife helps him fasten the traditional Imeretian dress in the village of Kitskhi, Georgia. Beradze, who lost his son during the war in Abkhazia in the early 1990s, says that only singing and humor helped him survive all these years.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
A girl speaks on her mobile phone at the top of the steps near the the Ezgulik decorated archway leading into Mustaqillik Maydoni (Independence Square) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia.
