Winter camping with the Kyrgyz nomads of Pamir

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Tajikistan | Saturday, June 29, 2013 | 5 photos

Yuri is a PhD student of Central Asian Studies and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has crossed 54 countries on the globe. His project to document the oral history of the Kyrgyz of Tian Shan and Pamir has brought him to some of the world's most fascinating and remote communities.
"I enjoy manual photography. My strength is wide, landscape, nature photography, but recently I turned increasingly into portrait. I have tried to express the sense of place by capturing the beauty of human faces, hands, emotions and actions. This gallery is not a collection of the usual stunning panoramas I take (plenty of these from the Pamir mountains!). Instead, I have tried to portray the harshness, coldness, severeness of one of the world's most isolated communities through the people's actions and habitats.
Life at 12 000 feet is a severe test to human endurance. During winter, the Pamir is at its most brutal and unforgiving towards the Kyrgyz and their domesticated animals. At the end of winter they start preparing for their annual migration to pastures further up the mountains. This lifestyle has been kept since time immemorial; unchanged even during decades of Soviet rule."