Arts & Sciences Events

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[PAST EVENT] Kashgar 1985: A Photographic Exhibit 

February 1, 2022 - March 11, 2022
Location
Williamsburg Library, 515 Scotland Street, Williamsburg, VA 23185
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
Making copperware. Photo Credit Clyde Haulman.
Making copperware. Photo Credit Clyde Haulman.

Thirty-seven years ago the fabled Silk Road city of Kashgar had recently been opened to Western visitors after decades of being closed. As a Fulbright Scholar at Wuhan University, Clyde Haulman had the opportunity to travel to Kashgar and Urumqi for an extended period with his wife Fredrika Teute.

An oasis and one of the westernmost cities in China, Kashgar has been a major trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Road for over 2,000 years. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Over the last three plus decades the Old City of Kashgar has been destroyed and redeveloped and repression of the Uyghar, the region’s Turkic speaking, Muslim ethnic group, has intensified, particularly after 2017.

The photographs in this exhibit provide a glimpse into what has been lost of the Old City and its Uyghar culture as a result of those changes.

“When I think of Kashgar, I remember first the sounds: the jingle of bells on the horses’ harness; clip-clop of hooves; Uyghars shouting “push, push” (get out of the way of their donkey carts); hammering of tinsmiths and blacksmiths; the call of the muezzins to Muslim prayer; insidious whispers of “change money”; little children’s shouting of “bye-bye” as we passed; the melodious tones of the Uygher language. Second are the smells of: fresh baked, hot bread; lamb shish kebab roasting; camel dust; donkey and horse sweat and manure.” Fredrika Teute, Journal 1985

The exhibit can be viewed during Williamsburg Library hours in the Theatre Gallery.

Photographs by Clyde Haulman, Fulbright Scholar, China 1985-86.

Photographic Prints by Hernan Navarrete

Travel Journal by Fredrika Teute