The Uyghurs

Kashgar before the Catastrophe

Photographs by Kevin Bubriski

Other Tahir Hamut Izgil and Dru Gladney

Imprint: George F Thompson Publishing

248 Pages, 10.9 x 12 in, 128 illustrations: 116 duotone and 8 color photographs by the author and 4 historic maps

Hardcover
9781938086991
September 2023
In Stock

$60.00

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This is the most formidable and comprehensive photographic book about the key city of Uyghur culture, Kashgar, before the Chinese government’s severe crackdown.

In 1998, Kevin Bubriski was fortunate to spend time with the Uyghurs in Kashgar, their ancient city on the Silk Road in Xinjiang, China. While there, he made unforgettable photographic portraits and street scenes that reveal a haunting beauty and sense of the past in old Kashgar. Bubriski was drawn to the faces of ordinary people and their daily lives, with the intent that through photographs mutual understanding between people might be fostered. Although 1998 was an uncomfortable time of rapid transformation for the Uyghurs, their oasis city in the high desert was still vibrant, even as the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown was about to commence. In the last few years, up to a million Uyghurs have been detained in “re-education camps” while others have been subjected to forced sterilizations and wider persecution. The vibrancy, beauty, and grit that Bubriski witnessed and photographed more than two decades ago has irrevocably changed.

The Uyghur cultural, economic, familial, religious, and spiritual traditions are captured in Bubriski’s images and the extensive text by Tahir Hamut Izgil and the late Dru Gladney. These traditions, interwoven in Uyghurs’ lives and community for more than two millennia, have been severely impacted by the overt and disastrous policies of the Chinese government’s crackdown on Uyghur civil, spiritual, and cultural activities. The Uyghur community is now fractured and split due to widespread surveillance, mass detentions, and incarcerations. This book is also presented in a bilingual edition so that it is not only accessible to Uyghur people living in non-English-speaking regions of the world, but a way for Uyghurs around the world to reaffirm their cultural and social identity wherever they now live.

As many Uyghur families are now separated due to detentions or flight to asylum elsewhere, the book is meant to be an enduring gift for the Uyghur people and for all who wish to understand better Uyghur culture and history. Bubriski’s book is a stunning work of art that reveals an earlier time when Kashgar, beloved city of the Uyghurs, retained much of its traditional life and charm.

Kevin Bubriski is a documentary photographer whose photographs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, among others. He has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, and Robert Gardner Peabody Museum Fellowships. Bubriski’s other books include Portrait of Nepal (1993), Pilgrimage: Looking at Ground Zero (2002), Nepal 1975–2011 (2014), Legacy in Stone: Syria before War (2018), Our Voices, Our Streets: American Protests 2001–2011 (2020), and Nepal Earthquake (2022). His Website is kevinbubriski.com.

Tahir Hamut Izgil is a prominent modernist Uyghur poet, filmmaker, and activist who grew up in Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He is recognized as one of the foremost poets writing in the Uyghur language. Additionally, he has directed numerous documentaries, music videos, advertisement campaigns, and feature films. Fearing persecution from Chinese authorities, he and his family sought asylum in the United States in 2017. His poetry has been translated into English, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish, and other languages. He is the current chair of the World Uyghur Writers Union.

Dru C. Gladney (1950–2022) was Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College where he also served as President of the Pacific Basin Institute. Gladney was the author of more than 100 academic articles and book chapters on topics spanning the Asian continent, and his books include Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (Chicago, 2004), Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (Wadsworth, 2003), Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the U.S. (Stanford, 1998), and Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic (Harvard, 1991).

“Kevin Bubriski's images from Kashgar on the brink of the millennium are nothing short of fantastic. They achieve what every documentary photographer hopes to achieve: journalistic precision and visual poetry. They are less than a quarter of a century old but beautifully tell the story of a place like no other in Asia. On my repeated viewings, I was engulfed by a mix of emotions, from nostalgia of an ancient city I hold dear in my heart but could only visit too briefly to jealousy of not making such images during my first trip to the region, despair caused by looking at a rich heritage that has recently been destroyed to anger when thinking of the violence that many among these people had to go through in the last few years, many of them locked in Chinese reeducation camps. The Uyghurs is an important photographic testament to a place not so far away from us that is already long gone.” ~Patrick Wack, photographer and author of DUST

“Kevin Bubriski’s photographs capture a Kashgar before the Chinese government’s crackdown that is a window into humanity and tradition, a world that few of us got to know but many dream of. His photographs hold that dream like a fragile locket. With captivating texts and poetry by Tahir Hamut Izgil and a historical essay by Dru Gladney, this book can help one understand just how rich and filled with warmth, depth, and history this important and magical city once was. The Uyghurs is a testament to the resilience of Uyghurs whose voices, culture, and memory must carry on.” ~Lisa Ross, photographer and author of Living Shrines of Uyghur China

“The Uyghurs: Kashgar before the Catastrophe should stop you in your tracks. With its haunting narrative, evocative photographs, and poignant texts and poems, this volume illuminates and inspires. Perhaps most important: At a time when Chinese authorities seek to erase Uyghur identity, this book also preserves.” ~Sophie Richardson, China Director at Human Rights Watch and author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

“Kevin Bubriski’s photographs offer a glimpse back into the ways and dreams of the people of Kashgar before the disasters of the twenty-first century. More than an echo of a vanished past, they suggest an alternative future: what it might look like for Uyghurs to live with dignity in the magnificent city they built themselves over the centuries.” ~James A. Millward, Georgetown University and author of 'The Silk Road' and 'Eurasian Crossroads'

“We often associate photographs with a feeling of loss, since they present the illusion of connecting to a person, place, or time that we know is already gone. This sense of loss is amplified in Kevin Bubriski’s The Uyghurs: Kashgar before the Catastrophe, because the disappearances that were imposed on Uyghur communities since these images were made are so severe and so full of trauma. As Tahir Hamut Izgil attests in the story of his childhood in Kashgar, the persecution of Uyghurs was already taking place clandestinely while Bubriski’s vivid images of Uyghur life were being recorded on the street. Two realities: one seen, one kept hidden. Bringing the two together in this book serves as a reminder that there is always more to imagine than what meets the eye in a photograph. The loss is real, but so is the life.” ~Carolyn Drake, photographer for Magnum and author of 'Two Rivers' and 'Wild Pigeon'

“[A] stellar compilation of full page black/white photography augmented by texts and poems from Tahir Hamut Izgil… A magnificent volume that will be of particular value to readers with an interest in Chinese Communist Party's racial discrimination campaigns against the Uyghurs.” ~Midwest Book Review

"The Uyghurs features striking portraits and street scenes in Kashgar alongside prose and poetry written by Kashgar activist and poet Tahir Hamut Izgil.” ~Bowdoin Orient

“What has been erased cannot be replaced, but Kevin Bubriski’s 1998 photographs can help us remember what once was in Xinjiang. The vibrancy, beauty, and grit of Kashgar and its people that Bubriski witnessed and photographed more 25 years ago has irrevocably changed, making his photographs even more significant.” ~The Diplomat