Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer whose album called “Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk” shows Uzbek people and their way of life and traditions. The album was published in 2007 contains about 100 pictures, 10 of which can be seen here.
It all sounds fine. But it isn’t. Umida is being accused of defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions because the authorities feel that she is depicting Uzbekistan as a backward country. A special commission set up by the general prosecutor has already found that her images distort reality. She has been banned from leaving the country and faces up to 6 months in prison and up to 3 years of public labor.
This is simply outrageous. Something is depicting Uzbekistan as backward, alright. But it is definitely not Umida Akhmedova’s pictures. They are one of the best examples of photojournalism I have seen recently. More of her fine pictures can be seen here.
I think this is a clear case of the ones in power reflecting their own dislike and disrespect for their own people to Umida. The Uzbek state can only see backward and uneducated people in those pictures because they think of those people as backward and uneducated people which need to be modernized, educated and westernized, to fit in with the image of the ideal Uzbek citizen the Uzbek state have in their mind.
This quite a common mindset of the state in many countries who had to go through a period of nation building in their recent history. Similar issues can still be seen in Turkey after almost eighty years of the independent republic. In Uzbekistan’s, case this is clearly even more drastic, having gained their independence from the USSR less than 20 years ago.
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