My project “A Shaded Path” is the result of four months spent traveling around an unknown country: Kyrgyzstan. I focused on portraying the unfamiliar faces and landscapes using my large-format camera.

This work highlights the generational disparities between the older generations in this country—those who are nostalgic for the order of the abolished USSR—and the nation’s modern, Westernized young people. It explores the trials of a fledgling country struggling to simultaneously form a national identity while keeping apace with the global economy.

In this faraway place, relics of past eras mingle with the faces of a population that are struggling with the tensions between tradition and transition.

—Elliott Verdier

If you’re interested in seeing more work on this and similar topics, we’d recommend these previous features: Fairy Tale from Russia, cinematic, dream-like shots of Russia—none of them staged—that speak to the importance of composition; Dale: Comfort and Unease in Norway, Juliane Eirich’s series, shot at the height of the summer in Norway, that grapples with the photographer’s restlessness; and Lands of No-Return, Viktoria Sorochinski’s project on the slowly disappearing small villages in Ukraine.

