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Paper short abstract

This paper unfolds, both literally through a photographic zine, and conceptually in the paper’s narrative, layers of recording, presentation and representation, of contemporary art and craft practices in Uzbekistan. Reflecting on how experimental community exhibitions can co-create visual archives.

Paper long abstract

Over the last 30 years Uzbekistan has seen a polarised history of state hostility towards some contemporary artists, running in parallel to the government’s enthusiastic adoption of the economic and cultural nation-building potential of ‘traditional craft’. How can an anthropologist’s visual ethnographic interventions - in this case an exploration of the creation of a contemporary photographic archive with art and craft practitioners – be a fruitful avenue for further visual ethnography and collaboration in recording and representing diverse practices.

This paper (presented alongside a photographic zine at the conference) brings together visual case studies of individual art and craft practitioners, presented in pop-up community exhibitions in three art/craft spaces in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, alongside community focus group accounts reflecting on the representation, perception and role of photographic images in a local context.

The collaborative and experimental process raised many poignant questions. Is the role of a visual anthropologist inherently extractive? Is the empowerment of local documentarians a more productive use of energy? Is there a need for local dissemination or is an international audience a valid end goal? How does the fundamental role of the outsider-photographer as translator between regimes of practice, justify the inclusion of their personal artistic voice in the composition and selection of works?

This paper unfolds, both literally through a photographic zine, and conceptually in the paper’s narrative, layers of recording, presentation and representation of contemporary art and craft practices in Uzbekistan. Reflecting on how experimental community exhibitions can co-create visual archives.