Gallery

The photo gallery starts from the section REPORTAGE, and it is possible to understand: Anatoly Rahimbaev was professional camera man and all his creative activity was connected exactly with reportages and genre pictures. As the letters are recognized by the handwriting and the writers - by the style, the Tragedy of Aral Sea became “carte-de-visite”, the main topic of work for Anatoly Rahimbaev.

Aral Sea was the fourth lake by area over half a century ago. It gave 45 thousands tons of fish per year until the land started to be actively reclaimed; cotton fields were grown and thoughtlessly irrigated. All that led to the catastrophe: the sea went on tens of thousands kilometers away, “dried” almost on 80%. There, where the waves were splashing before, a huge desert was formed. Fish disappeared along with the water; thousands of seamen lost the job; fruit and vegetable do not grow on Aral land; child mortality exceeds all the parameters; tons of salt come from the bottom of the sea into the air. The sea and people run every which way. And only local populations – the Kara-Kalpaks - do not go anywhere. They do not believe that the sea finally left. They are connected with this land by centuries-long Memory of remote ancestors.

Eastern motives and section ARCHITECTURE-Central Asia open in front of us the mystery of the most picturesque region. People with generous soul, with their age-old traditions, seeming wild, at first sight, to Slavonic people, live here. They skillfully master the craft (woodcutting, coinage, ceramics), they grow rich sweet fruit, enjoy flaming sun in chillya (this is the hottest time of the year in July-August – the temperature reaches up to 45-47ºC). They play weddings in the yards in spring and autumn (at that Gulchatay (the fiancée) does not open her face till the marriage party), and make fight cocks, kupkar (goat tearing on horses) and cook sweet sumalak from sprouted wheat for spring holiday Navruz.

The best pictures of the reportage series of Anatoly Rahimbaev were selected for site photo gallery. This is a hundredth part of what he made when he was a reporter. His creative work started from black-and-white photography, and only in the last years he switched on colored digital one. And only those pictures were included in site photo gallery, which Anatoly digitized and saved on the disks.

The site will be updated and in the sections of photo gallery the new interesting pictures will appear. I would like everyone, who is interested in the works of Anatoly Rahimbaev, to get acquainted with it.

All pictures on this site are copyright protected.