I chose these two images because they display Imperial Russia’s emphasis on the production of industrial crops over food crops. Approximately 80% of the trade section in the Turkestan album is dedicated to industrial crops while only 20% displayed … Read more

In the British Raj, the colonial rulers used photography as a way of establishing their racial superiority and as a way of distancing themselves from the people they ruled. It also allowed them to create a racial difference between the … Read more

I chose these pictures because their inclusion in the album, and the album’s vast amount of pictures referring to cotton production in general, reflect the priorities of the imperial state. Russia’s expansion into Central Asia in the 1860s and 70s … Read more

This painting is a stunning illustration of the tragedies of the Russo-Turkish war. Vereshchagin worked as a war correspondent and witnessed the the war’s severity and intensity with his own eyes. This painting masterfully depicts the emotional rawness of the … Read more

Pictured above is an Orthodox Church in Aulie-Ata, a city in the Syr Darya Oblast or what is now Taraz, Khakastan. The church adheres to features of Eastern Orthodox Church architecture:  a rounded rectangular shape symbolizing a ship as a … Read more

In contrast to the major Ashkenazi (European) Jewish population, Bukharan Jews are Mizrahi Jews who speak a Persian dialect with elements from Biblical Hebrew (Bukhori), and are followers of Sephardic Judaism. They lived mainly in the territory of the former … Read more

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/media/2018-02-on-foot-in-the-path-of-the-silk-road/   Jumping several centuries backward (and forward) in time from our point in the nineteenth century, Paul Salopek’s “Out of Eden Walk” is a ten year long bipedal journey along ancient routes of human migration. Although Salopek’s routes and … Read more