A Kyrgyz groom inspects a bride, 1871-1872 (top). Hotel Kyrgyzstan (now the Hyatt), 1974 (bottom).
Much of Kyrgyzstan’s rich history is buried in poorly organized government vaults, not necessarily off-limits, but difficult to locate. A new online photo project seeks to change that.
Kyrgyzstan's Union of Photojournalists has begun a crowd-sourced website to collect historical photos in one place accessible to all. And the archive is set to expand as the project officially launches tomorrow, says Vlad Ushakov, one of the founders of Foto.kg, The Kyrgyz Photo Archive.
“We offer all Internet users an opportunity to create the history of our country themselves. The motto of the website is ‘The country's history in photos, the history of photography in the country.’ Users will be able to display old photographs taken before 2000, which depict events, people, and historical facts. All this will be freely available and free of charge,” Ushakov told Vechernii Bishkek.
Each photo appears with historical information, whenever possible, including the year, location, and name of the photographer. Some are borrowed from other online sources, such as the Library of Congress, but this appears to be the first attempt to amass such a collection in one place.
Photo aficionados can register and post their images (though moderators will ensure users stick to appropriate themes), or they can have site administrators scan and restore their old photos, which are then returned. Images from earliest days of photography to the year 2000 are welcome.
In Turkmenistan, the former Soviet Union’s conflict with Nazi Germany is no longer “Great” nor is it “Patriotic.”
According to a report distributed by the opposition news website, The Chronicle of Turkmenistan, Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has banned the use of the term “Great Patriotic War” in reference to the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi forces.
State-controlled Turkmen media outlets employed the term in their coverage of Victory Day commemorations this past May 9. But immediately after the holiday, news outlet received instructions from the Ministry of Culture to use the term “1941-1945 war” from now on to describe the Soviet-Nazi conflict, the Chronicle of Turkmenistan reported.
The report went on to quote some journalists who said that some television and radio broadcasts that had been prepared for broadcast before the edict was issued had to be re-edited before they could be aired.
The Great Patriotic War remains the most widely used term in the CIS to describe the conflict. The term was first used just days after Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
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