FirstLook: Birthday Feast
- Arts
- Photography
Photograph by Carolyn Drake
In the small town of Syrdaryo, about 80 kilometers outside of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, photojournalist Carolyn Drake visited the family of a local friend. The visit coincided with a birthday celebration. In the family’s main room near a window, a dasturxon (Uzbek for tablecloth used as a place setting, usually set on the floor) served as a focal point for sweets, appetizers and side dishes, surrounded by kurpachas, felt mats used for sitting or reclining.
Laid out across the center of the dasturxon are four bowls of chocolate and pastries. Plates of cheese and kolbasa (sausage), and seeds and raisins mirror them from both sides, while alternating plates of olivier (Russian potato salad), kraboviy salat (Russian crabstick salad) and a salad topped with pineapple border the edges.
You may also be interested in...
Hijrah: A Journey That Changed the World
History
Arts
Avoiding main roads due to threats to his life, in 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his followers escaped north from Makkah to Madinah by riding through the rugged western Arabian Peninsula along path whose precise contours have been traced only recently. Known as the Hijrah, or migration, their eight-day journey became the beginning of the Islamic calendar, and this spring, the exhibition "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet," at Ithra in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, explored the journey itself and its memories-as-story to expand understandings of what the Hijrah has meant both for Muslims and the rest of a the world. "This is a story that addresses universal human themes," says co-curator Idries Trevathan.
How to Discover Egypt From the Inside Out
Arts
Rather than just telling travelers where to go, the guidebook Egypt: Inside Out by Trevor Naylor offers an inside-out perspective that evokes the experience of being there, inviting readers to embrace an almost meditative travel discipline of slowing down to take in the details and complexities of Egypt, moment by moment.
FirstLook - A blistering triumph for the back-street boys
Arts
Amid the roar of racers zooming toward the finish line in London during the 1980 Grand Prix, longtime auto-racing photographer and renowned artist Michael Turner trained his lens on a Saudia-Williams FW 07.