Photography by Toma Peiu, Luiza Pârvu

Exhibited as a part of “Naryn-Syr Darya: Three River Stories”
Visit online exhibition here

Message in a Bottle: River Flows is a photographic series capturing everyday landscapes from the Aral Sea basin. The Naryn-Syr Darya flows down from the Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan through the Fergana Valley and then into the Kazakh steppe, towards the North Aral Sea.

By placing these images in conversation, we suggest the interactions between this body of water – sometimes flowing freely, other times static, the people and landscapes that it connects.

This series is a “message in a bottle” between Shamaldy-Sai (Kyrgyzstan) on the Naryn river; Kyzylorda and Birlik (Kazakhstan) on the Syr Darya; Aral (Kazakhstan) and Muynaq (Qaraqalpaqstan, Uzbekistan), the two port towns that used to lie on the shores of the sea. We hope that it inspires new conversations between these communities and the geographical and cultural legacy that connects them.

January 2021

Produced as a part of The “Social Life” of a River: environmental histories, social worlds and conflict resolution along the Naryn-Syr Darya, a multi-year multimodal research project led by Dr. Jeanne Féaux de la Croix at the University of Tübingen – Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology