Kyrgyz

Wednesday December 8th, 2010

So many of our photographers are able to animate their work with their considerable achievements in other fields. A notable case in point is Jason Benjamin Smith, who, when he isn’t at home base in San Diego, spends his time drinking fermented horse’s milk and documenting the politics of biodiversity in Kyrgyzstan.

Jason has a background in environmental science and international studies, which coexisted with an interest in photography for several years. I asked him how the two began to intertwine in his work, and he explained,

For the first few years that I did photography, I really had no direction with it.   I went to college in my mid twenties, combining earth sciences and journalism—I had spent about five years studying languages, traveling, and decided that I should go into journalism with a focus on the environment. But while in school I discovered photography was more compelling—I just didn’t know anything about it.  So I spent the next several years learning, shooting, assisting, producing, whatever, until in 2007 I got sick of all that,  and made the commitment to focus on applying photography to what I know and care about.

One of the most recent expressions of this application of photography is a book about forest conservation in Kyrgyzstan, shot in collaboration with the organization Fauna and Flora International.

Not only did Jason take a series of beautiful photos of the people and landscape of Central Asia, he can also explain the social and environmental issues the photos illustrate. “The mountains of Kyrgyzstan in the heart of Central Asia, where the Alai Pamir and Tien-Shan ranges come together,” begins his book Kyrgyz, “harbor one of the planet’s unique caches of biodiversity… It’s estimated that 90 percent of this habitat has been lost in the last 50 years due to over-harvesting, timber extraction and uncontrolled grazing of livestock. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, poverty and lack of access to education have resulted in emigration to urban centers, habitat loss and exploitation of natural resources by outside commercial interests.”

The book documents the environmental degradation, but also the “stewardship” of the land by villagers who live in the forests. “Nuts, fruits, as well as meat from shepherds and hunters all function as currency—if it can be grown or harvested, it can be traded.” The connection of people to the land is an important fact for NGOs to understand as they work in such environments, and Jason focuses on certain microenterprise programs in the area.

The above photos show not only the stewards of the “rich forests” of Kyrgyzstan, but also what grows in these forests, which are considered to be “a main source of origin for many of the world’s most important cultivated fruit plants”—including walnut, apple, pear, almond and pistachio. “For this shot,” Jason said, “we went around our host village, and hiked through the forest to collect all the fruits and nuts that grow wild here, to show the richness of the region’s food diversity.”

The interdisciplinary approach is a major asset not only for Jason, but also for his clients. He told me about the mutual advantages that come with this kind of diverse knowledge:

I combine the two [specialties] by reaching out to companies, NGOs, magazines, etc., whose interests match my own. When they talk to someone who understands the kind of content their constituencies need, and has ideas about how to make it visual, it makes their job easier. Let’s take the book example:  forest conservation and food security are global topics I pay attention to, and understand the science and economic issues at hand, so when I contacted Fauna and Flora International, a UK-based NGO about their conservation work in Central Asia, we had lots to talk about and they were happy to help me get to a remote part of the world to tell the story about their work there.

For those of us who aren’t specialists, Jason certainly makes the scientific and political issues accessible and attention-grabbing. It’s well worth the time to visit the online flipbook preview, or better, to buy the book.

-Asad