Black-and-white world
In the past several issues, Sabina Odinaeva, project manager of Visit Uzbekistan Magazine, has been talking to talented, young Uzbek photographers and sharing interesting stories about their photography. In this issue, the hero of our photo story column is amateur photographer and traveller, Marat Nadjibaev.
Marat takes quite professional shots but considers himself an amateur photographer. For him, photography is an opportunity to preserve his impressions during his travels. He has managed to work in all genres, but his main focus is on landscape photography. According to Marat, it is a difficult genre in which you must work with what is natural. Namely, the world as it is at any given moment.
“To see the world, things dangerous to come
to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel.
That is the purpose of life.”
–The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
"Photography has been in my life since childhood,” Marat says. “My father had a Zenit (camera brand), then a little point-and-shoot camera and other equipment. I dabbled with all that stuff back then. Then I got my first phone with a camera. It was replaced by the first iPhone and then Instagram came along. Taking pictures of my life turned into a hunt for good shots.
“Now I've been in photography for seven years. After getting deeper into it, I realised that we have to be curious, easygoing, experimental and unafraid to make mistakes. We were all like that when we were kids, but then we grew up and became serious uncles and aunts.”
This series of photographs were taken between 2020 and 2022 in the Bostanlyk district of Tashkent. It is a series of experiments in black-and-white landscape – a rare and complex genre of photography. It is the work of meanings, light, shadow and details. Marat says these are like a conversation of souls; it is the absence of colours that conveys the sense and the mood of the image. It seems as if the photographer pauses the world and, for a moment, captures the story of that place.
“Remember,” says Marat, “the most precious photographs in the world are in black and white. Behind them is the story of creation; the story the viewer sees.”
