The Extrovert
Tashkent, Uzbekistan 2012
We were shooting in the Tashkent farmer’s market: kerchiefed women selling cabbages the size of a beach ball or hacking at sheep carcasses with hatchets, or heaping pyramids of halvah and sesame candy and best of all, gypsy women threading silently through the crowd proffering their medicinal ‘incense’… (more on this in a later post. I have to save some of my stories.)
Suddenly, the woman in the photo above tapped me on the shoulder and gave me to know that she wanted me to take her photo. By the time I’d lifted my camera to my eye, she was posed as you see: her hand caressing the bald pate of her husband. Her expression is contentment itself. She makes me think of a cat curled on a cushion. His expression is contentment as well, but he’s a bit shy because he won’t look into the camera. I like his diffidence. I think he’s a manly man. He wants his wife to be happy and he accepts her flamboyant way with a barely perceptible smile.
I show you this photo because I want you to ‘know’ this woman and her personality: to have an idea of what an Uzbek couple might look like and act like. You can see Asia in the man’s features, but she looks very European. Uzbek faces were not uniform. Uzbekistan is like America in that way; you can’t pick a ‘look’. Tall, muscular, fair men told me they were 100% Uzbek. I’d have said that they were Russian or Eastern European. I might add that most, the youngish ones, were handsome. Very. The women could be tall and fair or dark and slender.
I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Me? I’ve got to get into my kitchen and start cooking.