In the waves of a silent dawn, I emerged into the world and opened my eyes. In the mountains, there you feel free, a wise poet once wrote. Emerging from memories in the mist of time, and breathing the air of freedom into my lungs, it all becomes clear. And the silence all around speaks more than words could ever hope to do. It was as if I had woken up from a deep sleep, woken up from a bad, bad dream.
The Diamond Sutra is one of the world’s oldest texts, from 868AD. It is from the Silk Road, an area of Central Asia where Buddhist nomads and travellers once walked on the road to reality. They moved along on horseback, trading silks and spices and sought to be aware of and mediate on the physical world, and to be at peace. Prior to setting off on my journey on the Silk Road, I read about this text, which is a dialogue between the Buddha and his scribe Subhuti about impermanence and the nature of reality:
"This fleeting world is like
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream".
And just like that, I awoke. I was travelling along the silk road in Kyrgyzstan in central Asia, and then north to Kazakhstan.
I hoped to ride on horseback though some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world, to Lake Son Kul and Lake Issyk-Kul and I wanted to live with local families, such as the family of an eagle hunter. I hoped to photograph these old traditions. But above all I hoped to briefly live like a nomad, always on the move, and always exploring the beauty of the world.
Together with my local guide and friend Gulnaz and my driver Aleksei, we went out on the road.
We were planning to climb a mountain on horseback, in the Tien-Shan mountains (The Mountains of Heaven) and at the top of the summit, witness the view over the frozen Lake Son-Kul, sweeping its icy, frozen depths over the horizon.
We collected our horses in a local village, ready to begin the journey. My horse, called Karat, simply meaning “Black Horse”, was a wild character, but soon we developed a relationship and riding with him was the most natural thing in the world. A local guide called Sultan would take us into the middle of nowhere, to the mountain beyond.
The chill in the air, the green, frosty pastures covered in snow were my abiding memories of the start of the journey. Several hours later we emerged into a valley of vast and barren beauty, and from there it was a steep climb, a long and plodding journey up the snowy mountain. The horses wanted to graze, and it was a challenge for any creature, including sturdy horses, to reach the summit. At the top, my horse’s legs gave out, and as my horse eased itself down into the snow to rest, I gently dismounted along with my guides. This was the first problem we would have - near the top of the mountain, we would have to climb on foot to the top.
As every step I made sank into the snow, sometimes up to my knees, I knew that this was going to be a battle. But I was ready for this. Every step up to the top hurt and the altitude and height made my head thin and my breathing hard. But I did not feel anything, still less think about it, as I was focused only on reaching the top, and with my head in a vast ocean of clouds, my mind swam back to shore, and I looked up, to see that we had reached the top.
On top of the mountain was a spectacular view - Lake Son Kul stretching over the horizon. The lake was frozen, as I had come at winter in April. Above and below was only the blue sky over the horizon, lost in a sea of white. And it was here that I created my photograph “Between the Earth and Clouds”.
This was nothing compared to the challenge that was ahead of us. We climbed down and remounted our horses, and rode out across to the second mountain, across steep and beautiful valleys, with no-one around for miles, just the cold horizon and a head full of dreams.
It was twilight when we had reached the end of the journey, a house on the horizon, where I would sleep with a local family in the cold mountains. Night was about to fall, and here I created a photograph of my lonely horse looking into the valley as darkness falls. I was reminded then of a poem I had read by Walter de la Mare:
“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door,
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest’s ferny floor”
Such beauty was too much to bear and I knew that I was finally in the heart of the world. As we knocked on the door, the family let us into their little house on the mountain. The generosity and hospitality of people here in Asia, in cold and harsh environments is overwhelming and the warmth that shone through in the people, the children and families I photographed throughout my journey is something that will stay with me forever.
I now faced serious hardship - the conditions were literally freezing, and I would have to sleep on the wooden floor, in this house alone in the mountains. I was with my guide, but I was a long way from home, with nothing but the freezing chill biting into my bones. I chose to do this, to humble myself, to understand that life is not about digits in bank accounts, but about experience, about sensation, about feeling, about knowledge, about understanding. Life was hard for the nomads out here, but the materialism of the western world was something I had long distanced myself from. I did not want any more of the pain it had brought.
There was no electricity. There was no water. On the problem of water, I was concerned. But I drank water from the stream at the bottom of the valley, which they had boiled. I ate a simple meal of noodle broth boiled in the stream water. In my heart of hearts I knew that this was enough.
At night, I got out of the house to urinate in the mountains. And as I looked up at all the stars in the chill of the night sky, they blazed in an iridescent, luminous song, deep in my mind - “Song of the Light”.
I was wounded by my horse, as being on the saddle so long had opened up a cut in a painful area, and the next day, it hurt just to walk. Every step I took brought sharp, painful agony. I needed this pain, because it was real. It reminded me of a song I had listened to when I was young (Parabola by Tool):
“So familiar and overwhelmingly warm
This one, this form I hold now.
This reality here, this form I hold now, so
Wide eyed and hopeful.
Wide eyed and hopefully wild.
We barely remember what came before this precious moment,
Choosing to be here right now.
This body holding me, reminding me that I am not alone in
This body makes me feel eternal.
All this pain is an illusion.”
My photography is a memory of my journey. I was here, following the tracks of the great-grandfathers of the nomads in the wilderness. They were not forgotten, and one day the tracks would be found, just like my photography. A record of freezing time, freezing light, the perfection and stillness of reality itself. I had reached the end, and words came to me from the Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot:
“Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence”.
It took time before I was ready to continue onward on the journey, but we set off. The next stage was to be one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.
I stayed with an eagle hunter and his family in a remote and beautiful valley behind the mountains in Kyrgyzstan. Aytoo’s house, where he lived with his wife and daughters, was in a secluded and beautiful area in the valley. It was here that I woke up at dawn and created the photograph “Gone With the Wind”.
There are not many eagle hunters left now. It is a feat of incredible bravery. The eagle hunter raises the eagle all its life, after climbing a mountain and taking the young eagle from its nest. From this point, the eagle grows up together with the eagle hunter. The hunter uses the eagle to hunt prey, such as rabbits and other creatures in the mountain valleys.
I witnessed the eagle hunt. Wearing his traditional Kyrgyz outfit of green and gold, together with the traditional Kalpak (tall white hat signifying a mountain), the eagle hunter talked to his eagle tenderly and rode out in the valley on his horse.
I asked him to lift the eagle into the air. Suddenly the eagle was ready for the kill. As he lifted the mask from the eagle, the eagle locked its eyes onto its prey, a terrifying gaze, looking into the heart of its victim - ready for the kill.
My photography of the eagle hunt formed one of my most successful photographs, and this chapter’s cover photograph - “The Eagle Hunter”. The eagle hunter is holding the eagle aloft high in the air, and the eagle is gazing directly at its prey. No matter where you look, the eagle is gazing at you.
I will not describe fully what happened to the rabbit that the eagle killed. I was with my guide Gulnaz and a wonderful, kind hearted girl called Viola that was with us at the eagle hunt. She was a kind hearted vegetarian and one of the nicest people I met. She had to turn her head away and visibly winced in pain as the eagle destroyed the rabbit being hunted, by squeezing its neck, piercing its skull and eating its brain. That is the world of nature. In a universe of scarce resources, sometimes power is the only way to exist.
I also lifted the eagle myself high up into the air, in one of my selfies. The eagle was extremely heavy, while I was trying to look composed. I have rarely been happier.
Another stage on our journey was Tash-Rabat. This was a stop on the Silk Road, far away from all civilisation. It is on the road to the Chinese border. Here, ancient nomads built a structure called Tash-Rabat - no one knows why or what it was for. Again this night I slept in a strange house in the cold. But it was a beautiful memory. In front of this mountain I took one of my most important portraits of an old lady in a red coat, together with her child. It was influenced by the dark, rich tones of the photographer Steve McCurry. This photograph is called: “I travelled long roads, and I met lucky people”. It is named after a gypsy song from the country where I was born, Bosnia-Hercegovina. I had come a long way from my childhood and met truly lucky people from the heart of the world.
We went back on the road.
Wild horses were everywhere, grazing freely in the mountain pastures. Wild horses, everywhere. Their beautiful forms were silhouetted on the horizon. Often I shouted to stop the car, so I could jump out and shoot the horses. Horses are the main theme from my photography in this series. One of my personal favourite works I called “Nomads of the Soul” - a line of horses is following its tracks, migrations along the road to pastures new.
New experiences and new lives. Another photograph was well received - “Rest in Calm” - wild horses grazing at peace in the foggy mist of the mountain valley. As-Salaam alaikum - peace be upon you all, the wild creatures of this world.
I took many portraits of the peoples of the road, a boy in white standing tall and proud in the mosque in Naryn, a shepherd in a field somewhere along the road, Easy Rider, the alpha-male macho man commanding the scene on horseback, and ”A Gentle Creature”, a kind-hearted old lady somewhere along the journey, who radiated kindness and empathy in her wise, elderly gaze.
This photograph I named after a story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and is supposed to visually represent a counterpoint to the idea in that story - as the analysis on Wikipedia explains: “the characterization of the narrator and his wife's suicide are meant as a criticism of what Dostoyevsky refers to as kosnost, or spiritual stagnation that results from material pursuits”. The people of the Silk Road were some of the most hospitable and friendly I have met from all my travels around the world. One example of culinary excellence was when I was invited to have lunch with a Chinese Dungan family, who laid out a feast of one of the most exceptionally succulent meals I have ever tasted.
Back onto the road - we would next travel to Lake Issyk-Kul, a large lake in the heart of Kyrgyzstan. The area is vast, and fairly sparse. Large abandoned beaches stretch on for miles, in the heart of winter, and everything is still; and the waters are calm here by the lake, as the birds drift by in a cloudburst flight.
It was here that I got out and walked out all the way to the edge of the water. I had to be alone. I walked, and I walked. I crossed wet and watery marshland on my way out and got lost as I went further and further to the edge of the water by the lake. And it was here that the scene occurred that is one of the most iconic moments in my photography. I came across two horses grazing here in the marsh by the lake. I wanted to be like the horses, at one with their environment. I got down on my knees on the wet ground, and started to take photographs from every angle possible. Some from high above, but most from below, when I lay down on the ground in the earth.
I stood up, and I closed my eyes. I dreamed of a band of white horses running free and wild on the mountain plains. The white horses engulfed in flames, galloping into the blinding white light. And there you were waiting for me, with a smile.
Yet in my dream, the blinding white light dissipated its energy, and the day turned to night. The white horses turned to black. And the sky was draped in a deep, dark blue. We became two horses, black silhouettes against the backdrop of blue, the mountains behind us trailing a misty white vapour on the horizon.
Lost alone among the blue, I fell asleep and dreamed of you. The heartbreak of a forgotten love from my memories, once again seen in dreams, framed forever in a photograph.
At the end of this lake, my guide found me, bewildered, my head somewhere else. We walked back to the car. These horses were not the horses of reality, and neither were my painful memories.
Sunset on an abandoned beach, the scene that plays in my mind as I came out to the Lake Issyk-Kul, to the beach, with no-one there for miles around. Waiting for sunset; and suddenly, two figures appeared on the horizon in a boat as the sun fell against the mountains. In the vastness and danger of this beautiful world, we are not alone.
As for me, I had my memories. My most powerful photograph of this sunset scene was set alongside lyrics from an album called Distant Satellites, by the band Anathema, which has been with me for a long time. I reproduced it to reflect what was in my heart:
“In a lifetime
There's a moment
To awaken
To the sound of
Your heartbeat
Unbroken
And you’re free now
And I will remain
Still dreaming
Alive and aware
The love that I once believed in
And one day you’ll feel me
A whisper upon the breeze
And I’ll watch you stand there
Unafraid
And I'll speak to you silently
And know that you'll hear me
The feeling is more than I've ever known
Come back to me
Please believe
The feeling is more than I've ever known
I can’t believe it was just an illusion
And the fear was just an illusion,
Don’t leave me here,
Staring at the sun,
With a love so strong it hurts.”
It is a song about hope, and overcoming memory. It is about the death of a loved one, or a metaphorical death, of abandonment. It is not about “being in love”, or thinking of someone in particular, it is a symbol of love and the hope of engaging with reality, finding love in the world and finally being at peace. It is as much a dream, as it is the internal physical manifestation of that dream. A physical experience that will once again balance our inner worlds.
I washed out these dark imaginings in the hot springs near Lake Issyk-Kul, one of the most truly relaxing moments of physical well-being, being massaged by these hot waters. Clean, and free, we went back out onto the road.
I passed through the city of Karakol, a curiously empty and quiet place, that did not press itself on my mind with any urgency.
I will remember forever the beautiful hike through the forest of Jety-Oguz. We passed a waterfall into the green, fertile valley to follow the river into the heart of nature. Hiking for hours in this green wilderness was a beautiful experience and forms many of my panoramic nature photographs of this time. Stunning scenery of tall green trees rising above and around the yellow tinted forest floor, it could be compared to Switzerland, for the 99% of all educated western European people who have not even heard of the country of Kyrgyzstan.
I walked with my guide and friend Gulnaz for hours in this wilderness, where we talked about many social issues facing people in Kyrgyzstan, such as Stalin’s communist oppression following the second world war, current Chinese economic expansion and investment in the infrastructure of Kyrgyzstan and social issues such as bride kidnapping that persist to this day. We discussed Kyrgyz literature, such as Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel “Jamila”, which I later used as a title for one of my photographs. Jamila means “beauty” in Arabic. And my title, “The Search for Jamila” represents the search for beauty.
The beauty I talk of is not merely physical beauty. It is a deeper beauty that I have been searching for all my life. It is hard to find in the Western World. At the airport I had recently met an extremely attractive German girl, who had agreed to meet me in Kazakhstan. I was anxious that I should move on to Kazakhstan early so I could meet her. She turned out to be another disappointment. I sought love here for the wrong reason, seeking the physical only and not the additional mental connection.
My photography was held up for a few days, while I wandered the streets of Almaty, Kazakhstan, thinking about love, like a crazed young man. I did not achieve much here, so Kazakhstan may remain as a missed opportunity in terms of my artwork. While I hiked out to a beautiful lake in the mountains around Almaty (“This Dream Has No Boundary” and “Pure as Snow”), I was only in Kazakhstan for several days, so that I could sample the beauty of the culture and the wonderful people of Kazakhstan, so my date with the German girl was only a brief interlude. I was reminded that the situation is no different than in the western world, where this attractive woman did not look beneath the surface. She may have looked at me, but she did not see me. No doubt she assumed something about me that she did not understand. Since she lives and works in Central Asia, I left her there to her self-important career and quickly forgot about her.
My photography and my travel is my life, for which I have made every sacrifice. I may not have much time for a relationship, but art has given me the greatest rewards that few things can compare to. No-one knows the sacrifices I have made for my photography - I have sacrificed everything for what I love. Often I come back to this quote by Charles Bukowski:
“If you're going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don't even start.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind.
It could mean not eating for three or four days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail.
It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation.
Isolation is the gift.
All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.
And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.
And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It's the only good fight there is.”
The mountains of Kyrgyzstan will stay with me always, deep in my soul. The white blizzard of memory, blowing a storm through my heart. It was getting colder. I was getting older. The dreaming child could not become a cynical old man. There were so many dreams still to be dreamed. And I saw them there in the mountains:
“There is a Storm Coming. Like nothing you have ever seen,
It ebbs and flows and comes and goes,
And lifts you up and lets you go,
It eats inside and splits your mind,
As you search around for all this time,
To gather strength from the depths,
To fight the fight from day 'til night,
Til night, til night, til night,
This beautiful feeling soars over the skies,
Moving through my body and my mind,
It rises up and floods my brain,
This is fucking insane,
If there’s a storm, let it rage into the calm,
For a drowning man does not fear the rain.”
I adapted this into a new poem, based on a quote from the film Take Shelter, Anathema’s album Weather Systems by Daniel Cavanagh, and an ancient Persian proverb - “a drowning man does not fear the rain”.
The storm will pass, and resolve once again into calm. This too shall pass. Like all things, it shall pass. Like the tides of the sea, pulled in, and pulled out forever. Everything changes, and always stays the same.
Standing here on the mountain, I remembered all of the beautiful things that I had seen.
Among the reeds by the lake, where Rumi spoke:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
The road on the mountain valley where I got lost, and took a photograph of a wandering shepherd on a horse called “Memories of Dust”. That is what my memories were - dust in the wind, being blown away by the breeze, before my mind was free again.
Free like “Paradise Found”, the bird flying alone in the air, never soaring too high, because it soars with its own wings.
And the purple tinted sunset of my heart where I felt Nietzsche’s final flame:
“This flame with a white-grey belly
Flickers its greedy tongue into the cold beyond,
Bends its neck towards ever purer heights-
A raised serpent of impatience:
This signal I placed before me.
My soul is this flame,
Insatiable for new expanses,
To blaze upward, upward in silent passion”.
I once wanted to unmake the wild light. But I could not. I am all things, like the Steppenwolf in the novel by Hermann Hesse. And because of this, my experiences have taught me that I am of this world.
I wanted to leave the mountains of Kyrgyzstan with a memory of this song:
“Love is free
In time, in peace
And now is here
This life, this dream...
You know how it feels, but... is it all in your mind?
You know how it feels to be pushed and pulled through your life
And sometimes it seems like there is life in your eyes
And all that I know is I love you
And it feels like we're already flying
But the air is too thin and we're dying
Clouds all around take us higher
The world far below is on fire
I hold out my hand just to touch you
(Is it all in your mind?)
And all that I know is I love you
You're just a whisper away
We've come too far to turn back
This is where we stand,
And face it
This is who we are,
One step closer
Into thin air, we will go there
We've come too far to turn back
This is who you are, so face it
I feel you breathe
You're just a whisper away”.
As I stood on the mountain, I had come too far to turn back. This is who I am. I faced my memories, and I finally faced myself.
Read on for the next chapter via the home page, as we are about to enter our journey together to - AZERBAIJAN......