Category: Photography

Memories of Chorsu Bazaar – Tashkent, Uzbekistan

January 4, 2019

I dreamed of Uzbekistan for 12 years. Imagining being under an Uzbek sky – wandering through a market,  exploring, talking with people, taking their photograph, savouring every taste, sound and smell – became a preoccupation. Then it became an obsession: with each year that passed, overdrawn, tied to a different life, this journey seemed more impossible, until just the word ‘Uzbekistan’ made me upset. I gave up on my dream, and resigned myself to always feeling this way. … More Memories of Chorsu Bazaar – Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Kandalaksha – Russia’s Arctic North

December 29, 2018

A thousand miles from Moscow, a thousand kilometres from St. Petersburg, the Arctic town of Kandalaksha, on the frozen shores of the White Sea in Murmansk oblast’, is one of Russia’s most northerly communities. Founded 500 years ago as a fishing village, but with an aluminium smelter and locomotive depot giving the area an industrial purpose under the Soviet Union, Kandalaksha has been forgotten for the last twenty years. It is now only a dot on the vast Kola Peninsula – a 100,000 square kilometre expanse of pine forest between the White and Barents Seas. … More Kandalaksha – Russia’s Arctic North

Chess in Almaty, Kazakhstan: a photo on Guardian Cities

October 20, 2017

In October 2017 the Guardian newspaper ran a series of features from Central Asia on the Guardian Cities webpage. The article “The decline of Russian dominance is striking: readers respond from the Stans” includes one of my photographs, of some men playing chess in Almaty in Kazakhstan. … More Chess in Almaty, Kazakhstan: a photo on Guardian Cities

‘Letter from Yoshkar-Ola (Republic of Mari El, Russia)’ – for The Calvert Journal

December 6, 2016

At 7am the streets of Yoshkar-Ola were dark and empty. As I shuffled over dirty snow and treacherous black ice, the only sound was the bickering of ravens overhead. The shops on ulitsa Kremlyovskaya – Apteka No. 67; Evroset; Moda 21 vek – told me that I had arrived in provincial Russia. Except that ul. Kremlyovskaya is also Kreml urem: street signs and building plaques are written in Russian and Meadow Mari, the most widely spoken of the four Mari dialects.

I made a beeline for the peculiar buildings in the distance. … More ‘Letter from Yoshkar-Ola (Republic of Mari El, Russia)’ – for The Calvert Journal