Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Today, on 6 July, the Art station by Silk Road University gallery in Samarkand hosted the opening of the exhibition "Inner Horizon: Uzbekistan in the 1930s in the photographs of Ella Mayar". The initiator of the creation of the exhibition is the rector of the International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage Aziz Abdukhakimov.

“Such an exhibition was organized for the first time at the Art station by Silk Road University gallery with the support of the Swiss Embassy and other organizations. The photographs presented at the exhibition reflect the atmosphere of Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Karakalpakstan in the 30s of the 20th century,” says Aziz Abdukhakimov. “Visitors to this exhibition will certainly discover a new world by taking a journey through history.”

The opening ceremony was attended by First Deputy Minister of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change Obidjon Kudratov, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, Vice-Rector for Academic Research of the International University of Tourism "Silk Road" Professor Raymond Joseph Hoffman and others.

Ella Maillard is a Swiss traveler, athlete, photographer and writer who has dedicated her life to exploring and getting to know different countries and cultures. Challenging the traditional vision of the role of women in society on the one hand and not wanting to continue the family business, she conquered the Swiss Alps on skis and the Mediterranean Sea on a yacht, traveled alone to Central Asia, Afghanistan, India, China and Turkey, by helicopters, trains, carts, camels, horses or on foot.

The exhibition presents photographs that Maillard took in 1932 in Uzbekistan during her seven-month journey through Central Asia. The impressions of that trip in the form of texts and pictures are collected in her book “From Heavenly Mountains to Red Sands” (“Turkestan Solo – One Woman’s Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum”).

Ella Maillard wrote: “The immensity of the horizon must be within us, must come only from us. Only those who can comprehend and understand the immensity can attain it. And only those who have found a way to express it can understand it.”

It was important for her to see how the new political and social structure was changing the lives of people in the Central Asian region, how the traditions and way of life that had been formed over the centuries were leaving, and a new way of life came in their place. The traveler tried to capture in her lens the remnants of the outgoing authenticity - as she understood it, against the backdrop of a rapidly advancing civilization and to understand how the inhabitants reacted to the changes brought to the region from outside.

An archive of original photographs of Ella Maillard is held at the Photo Elysée, Musée cantonal pour la photographie in Lausanne, Switzerland. The exhibition "Inner Horizon" in Samarkand features digitized duplicates of photographs provided by the Photo Elysée Museum.

The organizers of the exhibition were the Silk Road International Tourism University in Samarkand, the Embassy of Switzerland in Uzbekistan, the Elysée Museum of Photography in Lausanne (Photo Elysée, Musée cantonal pour la photographie), and the Association of Friends of Ella Maillard and Ms. Anneliese Hollmann. The curator of the exhibition is Dona Kulmatova.

The exhibition will run until 8 October 2023.