Alessandra Meniconzi: Nenets Of Arctic Siberia

Photo © Alessandra Meniconzi_All Rights Reserved

“I prefer remote and rugged places, mountainous terrain and desert."

Yes, Alessandra Meniconzi prefers to travel to areas many other travel photographers wouldn't think of going because they're truly remote and inaccessible. An excellent photographer, she's also extremely versatile, and her updated website features new galleries that cover most of the globe's regions.

Alessandra's galleries range from the Arctic Siberia to Ethiopia, from Lapland to the Silk Road, and from Greenland to Tibet and the Himalayas. She worked extensively for more than a decade in the remote areas of Asia, documenting minority people and their traditional cultures. More recently, she focused on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that are threatened by climate change, development, and resource extraction.

I chose to feature her Nenets of The Arctic Siberia gallery, as it's one of her most recent work. The Nenets are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation. They have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stresses respect for the land and its resources.

Her photographs have been published widely in magazines, as well as in books for which she was the sole photographer: The Silk Road (2004), Mystic Iceland (2007), Hidden China (2008) and QTI -Alessandra Meniconzi, Il coraggio di esser paesaggio (2011).

Diana Markosian: The Girls of Chechnya

Photo © Diana Markosian-All Rights Reserved

An interesting glimpse in an area that a relatively few are really familiar with...Chechnya, was recently featured by TIME Lightbox.

Diana Markosian's Goodbye My Chechnya is such a glimpse into the lives of young Chechen women who witnessed the horrors of two wars, and are coming of age in a country that is rapidly rediscovering its Muslim laws and traditions.

It's particularly interesting to view Diana's photographs of these Chechen women and their traditions and compare them to Oded Balilty's photographs of the Jewish ultra orthodox communities, which included a series on a traditional Hasidic Jewish wedding.

Two separate religious traditions, often at odds with each other....and yet similar in so many ways. And as both photo essays are made of such compelling photographs, that the comparison between the two from an aesthetic point of view bring this point very clearly to the forefront.

According to Diana Markosian,  Chechnya is experiencing a wave of Islamicization since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Religious dress codes are the rule, young (and polygamous) marriages are frequent and gender roles are increasingly conservative.