I'll drink to that

A group of Kazakh, Uzbek and Russian friends enjoy a Sunday afternoon beside Lake Issyk in the Ili-Alatau National Park, Kazakhstan. Here, Lola and her new boyfriend Nurik down another shot of vodka.

Any outing in the former soviet union requires alcohol. Usually vast quantities of vodka, drunk straight down. It doesn't matter what it is: a birthday, a wedding, a graduation, of course, but also, a bus ride, a picnic, an interview, meeting an old friend or meeting anyone, for that matter. It is rude to refuse. Not that I don't try. In order to get this shot, I had to consume several more shots than I'd have liked. Lola grabbed me by the wrist and wouldn't let go until I had downed every drop.

Members of a Raion Election Commission in Ala Buka, Jalal Abad oblast, Kyrgyzstan, make celebratory vodka toasts after an inspection by international observers from OSCE.

It reminds me of an old photo I recently rescanned. After we grilled a group of commissioners in a remote Kyrgyz town about how they were corrupting the election, they insisted on taking us up to an isolated mountain pass. It would have been a good spot to shoot us from behind and bury us under boulders. Instead, they drank copious amounts of vodka and pressured us to follow suit.

bragging

I hate to brag, but... who am I kidding, I love to brag. Just don't do it often enough. A photo of mine graces the (back) cover of a new book officially released today by Harvard University Press: Henry Kissinger and the American Century, by UW professor Jeremi Suri. The photo is a boring one, author photos usually are.

I think it is because I grew up in a household that revered books: I always feel a special pleasure when my photos are used on book jackets. But I must admit, the talking portrait I shot of Suri for UW in 2005 was more interesting.

chilling out

Serik Baizhanov of Almaty, Kazakhstan, enjoys a (very brief) swim in Lake Issyk, in the Ili-Alatau National Park about 60 km (35 miles) from Almaty.

Lake Issyk is at 1760 meters (5,775 ft) elevation, fed by glaciers on nearby 4978–meter (16,332-foot) Talgar Peak; the water is a frigid 9 degrees Celsius (48 F). Despite the chilly water, I also went for a swim. It took me 15 minutes to get myself in, and 15 seconds to get back out!

shooting the moon

The full moon lights a radio telescope and the peaks above the GAISH Astronomical Observatory in the Zhungarsky Alatau mountains outside Almaty, Kazakhstan. Above the observatory is 3954-meter (12,972-foot) Peak Turist. This photograph was taken in the middle of the night, with an 8-second-long exposure to capture the starlight.

Piracy

Gulzhana (surname withheld) sells pirated DVDs from a sidewalk stand in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. “We sell videos for 70 som [US $1.85] for each one. Every day I sell about fifteen. We buy them for 50 som [US $1.32]. Gulzhana sells films in Russian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek. Each DVD typically contains eight to ten movies. "There are no legal DVDs sold in Kyrgyzstan," says my friend Buajar Bekova, "just good illegal copies and bad illegal copies."

As a photographer, I think a lot about copyright. By putting my photos up online, I am aware that anyone could take them and use them without credit. It is a risk I am willing to take.

However, the film industry clearly has reason to be worried: consider US $18.2 billion in losses from piracy in 2005. Anyone with a high-speed internet connection can download films for next to nothing. While I’m sympathetic to the MPAA, and they've done a lot of work on enforcement, their outreach efforts strike me as ridiculous.

Their educational campaigns (“You can click but you can’t hide”)

and recruitment efforts (theater employees can win $300 if they take an anti-camcorder quiz)

5. True or False: If you spot illegal movie recording in your theater, you should do whatever is necessary, including using force, to stop the suspect.

are not going to stem this tide of DVD vendors on every street corner.

What would work? Perhaps undermining the illegal market by making legal copies available at affordable prices? Perhaps creating a micro-enterprise distribution system that could get legal film copies to vendors like Gulzhana in Bishkek?

I spoke with Drew Sullivan, an expert on human trafficking based in Sarajevo. Admittedly, I will lose more sleep over sex slaves than cheap movies, but the principles are similar. Drew told me, “the traffickers are always three steps ahead of the governments. To disrupt the trade, we need to make it so the business is no longer financially lucrative.”

seeing the light

Calling all photographers:

For the last six months I've been reading the excellent strobist blog run by David Hobby, a Baltimore Sun photographer. It's essentially an ongoing, online lighting seminar, with an associated flickr discussion group.

Some of the material offers a good basic introduction to lighting and some of it is more complex (but still understandable!) His On Assignment section has some interesting demos of how he lit his shots. I get new ideas every time I read it, and there are always great discussions about technique with pros and amateurs. Frankly, I've been humbled by some of the great work that hobbyists are putting up there. (For instance, here is a recent fave.)

This week, David is starting a Lighting 102 seminar. Check it out.

Buddha and the beasts

Buddhist meditation at Tamgaly Tas.

Two thousand years ago, before the Mongols, before the Russians, Kazakhstan was a Buddhist land. Today only a few signs remain from this period.

Tamgaly Tas is an archaeological site with Buddhist petroglyphs, on cliffs beside the Ili river. The barren spot downstream from Lake Kapchagai is frequented mostly by fishermen, picnickers and rock climbers, all of whom leave an enormous amount of garbage in their wake.


So today I followed a group of 35 Kazakhstanis and foreigners who participated in a trash cleanup at Tamgaly Tas. The group was wildly diverse -- a local Buddhist monk, an intern for Halliburton, an archaeologist, a fashion designer, representatives from assorted embassies and Kazakhstan's one-man Green Party. During the cleanup, organized by climatologist Renato Sala of the Laboratory of Geoarchaeology, the volunteers filled a truck with bags of garbage and took part in a ceremony honoring the birthday of Buddha (May 24 this year by the Chinese calendar).


Some additional photos: (back by popular demand!)

Greetings from Almaty

Republic Square in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The morning sun silhouettes statues in the center of the square, including the Monument to Independence topped by a replica of the Golden Man, a celebrated Scythian archaeological relic dating from the 5th century B.C.

After 6 1/2 years away, it's good to be back in Kazakhstan. When you return to a place you once lived, what you notice most is the changes. More traffic. Supermarkets stocked with imported goods, including Raisin Bran and chick peas. Much more Kazakh spoken on the streets; in the past, all we used to hear was Russian. Crazy inflation, especially real estate. Rents have tripled - we're paying $1000 for a 2 room. Lexus SUVs and Hummers. New high-rise apartments and suburban sprawl. Curb cuts and working crosswalks. And did I mention the Raisin Bran?

The statue of the boy on the horse is my baby Jacob's favorite. Since the square is just a few blocks from our house, we walk there often. He points at the horse and barks and wants to rub its legs. Today he was patient enough to sit in his stroller while I did some shots.

smoking sunset

I did some portraits of actress and film student Lena Prokopenko in the Botanical Garden in Kyiv, overlooking the city skyline. The portraits came out fine, but my favorite shots were after we were done, when Lena lit up a smoke and stared out at the setting sun. Can I just say this? Kyiv is a great city.

begging for a change

Two men both named Oleg (surnames withheld) beg for money at an entrance to the Kontraktova metro station in Kyiv. Oleg (above) was a driver but lost his lower leg and his job in a traffic accident 8 years ago. Today he sleeps beside a lake in a Kyiv park. He declined to answer any further questions about his life.

I wanted to convey this scene from Oleg's perspective, people passing by without a second glance. Actually, I think I hate this photo. I can tell you five things wrong with it. But I keep looking back at it.

a moving experience

This week we are uprooting ourselves as we move from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. It's hard to believe that half of our year abroad is over! Amy and Jacob flew to Almaty today, via Istanbul. I fly on Friday, after I try to tie up about 1 million loose ends here.

We will probably be out of touch for a week or two until we get an apartment and figure out internet access.

As I leave Ukraine, I feel I've just now started to understand the multitudinous problems surrounding Chernobyl. I am starting to look into grants so that we can get ourselves back here, hopefully sooner rather than later.

after the nukes

Leonid Budkovsky delivered military mail to the Chernobyl zone for nearly 5 years after the 1986 accident. "In Chernobyl, no one knew how serious it was. We wore no special clothes," he told me. He began to have health problems in 1992 and by 1996 he was confined to a wheelchair. "I am 55 years old and no one needs me," he said. "I can still hold a spoon but I need help to go the bathroom and I have to wear Pampers."

Why am I doing a project on radioactive lives? I have to admit, the more I photograph and interview, the less certain I am about the purpose of my project. I suppose such lack of clarity is unsurprising at this midpoint.

I set out with the idea that there were important stories to be told. Like most social documentarians, I wanted to shed a light in the darkness. Find the people who are suffering and let the world know about them; implicit in this equation is the idea that publicity is good, and that my work might motivate others to help. Another implicit assumption is that an individual story can be used to personalize and illustrate a broader problem.

Leonid with his grandson Slava.

I still believe there are important stories to be told here, but they are not necessarily stories of suffering. Moreover, I am wondering if the simplistic equation of publicity = help is wrongheaded. An good essay by Jim Johnson on the purpose of documentaries has left me wondering about my own purposes.

Soon I'll be in Kazakhstan and I'll learn whether the issues I've found at Chernobyl are also present in the Semeypalatinsk Polygon (nuclear testing zone).

Viktor and Lydia Gaidak

The first time I met Viktor Gaidak, he stood up in the middle of lunch and peeled up his shirt to show me the scar on his chest. Viktor worked for 24 years at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, including 9 years after the 1986 catastrophe. In 2004 he had surgery for colon cancer.

A few weeks later, I went to interview Viktor and his wife Lydia in their apartment. I was thinking about Viktor's scar, one of the few visible signs left by the radiation he experienced as an engineer and liquidator. I was hoping he would be willing to show me the scar again for the camera. He agreed.


I find imagining a photo ahead of time helps me be prepared for it, as long as I'm not too attached to my preconceived image. In this case, the moment made a decent photo, but the composition didn't come together quite as I hoped; I actually prefer the shot I took a few minutes earlier, a very tender moment when Viktor reached over and grabbed Lydia's hand.


"When I was sick with cancer," says Viktor Gaidak, a retired engineer who worked for 24 years at Chernobyl, "we sold our car to pay for the surgery. We sold our TV, we sold our refrigerator, jewelry, everything we could. Now my wife Lydia has cancer and there's nothing left to sell."

kindergarten in the exclusion zone

April 26 is the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. I spent the day touring the Chernobyl exclusion zone with the crew behind pripyat.com, a website devoted to the history and news from Pripyat.

Pripyat, the city adjacent to the Chernobyl power station, had 46,000 residents. All that now remains are the slowly crumbling buildings. Anything of value has been destroyed or stolen in the past 21 years. Vlad Vitvitskiy showed me around the Solnitsye kindergarten where his brother and sister attended school.

My wife Amy thinks this photo is cliche. She says anyone who has seen photos from Chernobyl has already seen photos of abandoned toys scattered across the classrooms. Perhaps, but I found the hastily abandoned toys and pillows and baby shoes quite affecting. To think that the children who played here have either died or grown up to have kids of their own.

Were these dolls abandoned in this position, mid-play, or did someone rearrange them over the past 2 decades? Hard to say, but they've been there long enough to collect a layer of disintegrating ceiling tile dust on them. The red blocks on the right have most likely gone untouched for over 20 years.

I have many photos to share from the day; I will post more as I process them.

Yeltsin dies in Moscow

Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first (some would say Russia's only) democratically-elected President in 1,000 years, died yesterday in Moscow from heart failure. Here is an irreverent photo I took of him in 1999, shortly before he left office, while he was playfully scolding a journalist. I met him twice, and both times I found him boisterous but very genial.

Yeltsin was a dedicated reformer, but left power with a mixed record: he lead Russia forward in democracy and free speech, but he also moved too hastily in privatization and it was he who started the wars in Chechnya. Still, I find it telling that his old political enemy Vladimir Zhirinovsky said yesterday that Russia "was never freer than it was under Mr. Yeltsin."