Curated by Shakhnoza Karimbabaeva (Gallery Bonum Factum, Tashkent) in collaboration with Photo Elysée, Cantonal Museum for Photography, Lausanne, Switzerland and the Embassy of Switzerland in Uzbekistan
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Gallery Bonum Factum presents the traveling exhibition “Courage and Empathy” of retrospective photography by the Swiss photographer Ella Maillart and various Uzbek artists. The first stop of this traveling exhibition is at Gallery Bonum Factum in Tashkent from November 10 to December 12, 2023. The opening of the exhibition will take place in the framework of the 2nd edition of the Swiss Days in Uzbekistan (7.11. – 10.11.). Next stops will be in Bukhara and Khiva in 2024.
This exhibition is a collaboration between Gallery Bonum Factum (Tashkent), Photo Elysée, Cantonal Museum for Photography in Lausanne, Switzerland and the Embassy of Switzerland in Uzbekistan. Special thanks go to the “Assocation Les amis d’Ella Maillart” and Mme Anneliese Hollmann who preserve the extraordinary heritage of Ella Maillart.
The exhibition features more than 35 works by Ella Maillart, who visited Uzbekistan in 1932, and works of Uzbek photographers such as M. Penson, P. Kildushev, Kotlyarovsky, Dubinsky, B. Shukhatovich, from the same era. Their work tells us about the main turning points that occurred in Central Asia during the revolutionary years. It also reminds us of the relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, and which set a common standard of achievements for all people and nations. Travel photographs such as those that can be seen in the exhibition helped shaping a common understanding for the need of globally applicable rights. The exhibition is complemented by contemporary artists of Uzbekistan: S. Dim, S. Jabbarov and D. Razzikov.
Ella Maillart herself was a Swiss writer, traveler, and photographer who made several trips to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, including seven months traveling through Soviet Central Asia in 1932. She was a master of dynamic documentary photography and an entertaining storyteller. Upon returning home from her travels from the Tien Shan to the Kyzylkum, she published the book “Des monts célestes aux sables Rouges” (‘From the Heavenly Mountains to the Red Sands’). As Ella Maillart herself said: “I was a journalist by necessity, and a photographer by vocation”. She witnessed a grand experiment when major changes were taking place in social and political life.
Photography, as one of the main propaganda tools for the construction of a new state, was of particular importance for the changing picture of the world. Famous Soviet photographers such as M. Penson, G. Zelma, A. Shaikhet or B. Kudoyarov, at the call of the then media, turned their lenses to socially determined orders. At that time, photographers were under pressure from socialist propaganda and simultaneously trying to experiment in search of self-expression. At the same time, without completely unfolding the plot in time and space, causing the viewer to desire to imagine the plot himself, to move from the passive content of the photograph to active creative work, while choosing new forms and angles.
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