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The actual history of Kyrgyzstan begins in 1924, when the territory was first plotted to a map. Within the larger framework of the Soviet Union, the Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was drawn up as a separate political and administrative unit. By 1936, this unit had become a sovereign Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), one of the eleven (later: fifteen) SSRs that made up the Soviet Union. Of course, this delineation was not contrived in a historical vacuum but was built upon existing ideas of a certain population living in a certain area.

In ancient times nomadic federations advance over large stretches of land, looting and destroying towns and cities, until the nomads settle down themselves, form settled civilisations that are destroyed by new nomadic federations in their turn. This meta-analysis has given rise to stereotypical images of nomadic peoples that are violent and freedom-loving versus settled groups that are industrious, religious and sustain high culture. When put to the test of the data on present-day Kyrgyzstan, however, the pattern fails. Nomadic groups often forced each other out of their territories, living peacefully alongside settler groups at the same time. Generally, the Tien Shan mountains are seen as cradles of nomadic groups, whereas the Ferghana valley gave rise to a number of urban civilisations. In 130 BC, for example, a Chinese diplomat who travelled Central Asia found a settled group, the Davan, in the Ferghana valley and a nomadic state of Wu-sun in the mountains. These groups are both remembered in Kyrgyzstan by compelling anecdotes. The Davan were the owners of the legendary ‘Heavenly Horses’. The Chinese were keen on obtaining these to use them in their battles against the Xiong-nu (probably the Huns). They sent two armies to fight the Davan, in 103 and 101 BC, and only obtained the desired horses when they defeated the Davan in the second campaign. Of the Wu-sun, a seventh-century Chinese writer wrote the following: the Wu-sun differ greatly in their appearance from other foreigners of the Western lands. To-day the Turks with blue eyes and red beards, resembling apes, are their descendants. During my fieldwork, I found that this comment had been modified into my informants’ frequent assertion that ‘the Kyrgyz used to look like Europeans, with red hair and blue eyes’. Interesting is the difference in assessment of the physical features – ape-like to the Chinese, which was probably a low-status qualification, and European-like to present-day Kyrgyz, that they generally regard as a high-status qualification. Also interesting is that in this case, my Kyrgyz informants traced their ancestry back to the early inhabitants of present-day Kyrgyzstan. Commonly, the ancestor Kyrgyz are considered to be a people that migrated from Siberia. It is possible, of course, that in popular historiography the comment on the Wu-sun is taken entirely out of context and transferred to the Siberian ancestors. In later years, the area was inhabited by members of the nomadic federation of the Juan Juan, and other nomadic empires such as the Kök-Türk, the Karluks  and the khanate of Chingiz-Khan’s son Chagatai. The urbanbased Karakhanid state was the first Islamic state in present-day Kyrgyzstan. In the tenth century it had power centres in Talas and Kashkar, and later also in present-day Uzbekistan’s cities of Samarkhand and Buchara. However, not all empires that held power over the area can easily be defined as nomadic or settled. A second distinction has therefore been brought forward. The early inhabitants of Kyrgyzstan’s territory are also identified as Iranian, Turkic or otherwise, usually by a reference to their language. As I have mentioned, the early Sakas were said to have spoken an Iranian language. The first Turks appeared on the scene in the sixth century AD. They are referred to as the Kök-Türk (Blue or Celestial Turks). Their khaganate gained momentum in 552, when the last Juan Juan khan was defeated. Present-day Kyrgyzstan fell under the Western khanate when it split in 581. The Kök-Türk are remembered by my informants because of their so-called Orkhon Inscriptions. In 1889, a Russian expedition to Mongolia uncovered two monuments to Bilge Khan and his brother Kül Tigin in the valley of the river Orkhon. These monuments were adorned with runic inscriptions that are important to the present-day Kyrgyz because they mention a Kyrgyz people at the Yenisey River. At the Yenisey River itself, similar runic inscriptions have been found. Other Turkic states have been formed by the Seljuk, a branch of the Oguz Turks and the empire ruled by Timur, also known as Timur-i-leng or Tamerlane. However, most of the empires that extended their influence over present-day Kyrgyzstan cannot be identified by one clear ethnic background. The Kara-Kitai, for example, are described by Kwanten as the refugee descendants of another empire, the Ch’i-tan empire. He explains that scholars still debate whether they were Tungusic, Mongol or Turkic. In many versions of the Manas epic, the Kara-Kitai are mentioned as Manas’ main enemies. According to B.M. Yunusaliev, the Kara-Kitai are also known as Kidan in the epic, which appears to be the same word as Ch’i-tan. Nowadays, the word Kitai is used for China and the Chinese, but considering the above, care should be taken in identifying Manas’ Kara-Kitai enemies as a group of ethnic Chinese (ibid., see also chapter four). The Kara-Kitai were ousted by the Nayman, another name that occurs in Manas versions, and whose ethnic affiliation is obscure. They were on the run from Mongols, but later referred to as Mongols themselves. The subsequent Chagatai khanate is described as a loose coalition of Türks, Uighurs, Kara-Kitais, Persians and others under the leadership of a tiny Mongol minority. After Chagatai’s death, the khanate became politically unstable and was ruled by eighteen subsequent khans, until its division in 1338 into Transoxiana and Mogholistan. Most of present-day Kyrgyzstan fell under Mogholistan, Moghol being the word used by the Mongols to denote Turkic peoples. The previously mentioned Timur, who was born in a Turkic family, came next. When he died, present-day Kyrgyzstan went back to being Mogholistan and was ruled by Mongol leaders who had to deal with Turkic coup attempts. All of this clearly indicates that the population was not reducible to one single ethnic group. The third recurring element in the description of Kyrgyzstan’s history is the division between North and South. This division, that is so important today, is recovered in past epochs. The situation of the urban Davan in the South versus the nomadic Wu-sun in the North is paralleled in the eighteenth and nineteenth century by the Southern Kyrgyz who were part of the Khanate of Kokhand and the Northern Kyrgyz who fell outside of Khokand and were either independent, or under Russian and Chinese rule. In the sixteenth century, the occupation of this area was taken up by the Kazakh and the Kyrgyz . This is where the two story-lines – the history of the territory of Kyrgyzstan and the history of the Kyrgyz people – collide. Before returning to this point, I will summarise the historiography of the Kyrgyz ethnic group. History of the Kyrgyz The Kyrgyz are traced back to the third century BC, when Chinese annals speak of a people called the Hehun. Kyrgyzstani scholars argue that these must be the Kyrgyz, because they are also referred to as Hyan-hun, Kigu or Chigu. These people lived in Southern Siberia, along the River Yenisey or one of its sources in the Altai mountains, over 1,000 km north-east of presentday Kyrgyzstan. According to Barthold, the Hehun people were not originally Turkic but Samoyedic, just like the Uralic peoples who live along the Yenisey River today. Around the sixth to eighth centuries AD, Greek, Chinese, Arab and Uygur sources mention a Kyrgyz state halfway along the Yenisey River. According to Mokrynin and Ploskich, the names used in these sources closely resemble the word Kyrgyz. Greek sources speak of Kherkis and Khirkhiz, Arab sources of Khyrgyz or Khyrkhyz, Chinese Syatszyasy or Tszilitszisy, and Uygur and Sogdi texts speak of Kyrgyz. However, most of the available information about this group comes from a number of Chinese sources, which use names that can be transliterated in various ways. Liu speaks of Ki-ku, Chien-k’un or Hsia-ch’a-ssu, Wittfogel and Chia-Shêng add Ko-k’un, Chieh-ku, Ho-ku and Hoku-ss. They remark that according to Barthold, these terms are a crude transcriptions by the Chinese of the original word best transcribed as ki-li-ki-si. The variety of ethnonyms indicates that the contribution of specific information to the ancestors of the present-day Kyrgyz is problematic, to say the least. Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that the people who are called Kyrgyz today are descendants from these ‘Kyrgyz’ in Siberia. Still, present-day Kyrgyz feel related to these ‘Kyrgyz’, and base their history on secondary information from the Chinese sources. In this interpretation, the Kyrgyz were the people who fought a fierce battle with the Uygurs in 840 AD. The Kyrgyz won and destroyed the Uygur capital Karabalghasun. They were not interested in trade, and after having turned Orkhon into a backwater they were driven away from it by the Khitans fifty years later. In Suji in present-day Mongolia, a text has been found that was written in ‘Kyrgyz letters’, a rhunic script similar to the above-mentioned Orkhon Inscriptions. It is dated to the ninth or tenth century and contains eleven verses, the first of which are translated as: ‘I have come from Uygur ground, called Yaklagar-Khan. I am a son of the Kyrgyz.’. The Kyrgyz are mentioned again in connection to the conquest of a Karluk town in 982. Barthold writes: At that time the Qirgiz lived in the upper basin of the Yenisey, where, according to Chinese sources, they were visited every three years by Arab caravans carrying silk from Kucha. […] It is possible that the Qirghiz, having allied themselves with the Qarluk, took the field against the Toquz-Oghuz and occupied that part of Semirechyé which is their present home. In any case, the bulk of the Qirghiz migrated into the Semirechyé considerably later. Had they lived in the Semirechyé at the time of the Qarakhanids, they would have been converted to Islam in the tenth or eleventh century. As it is, they were still looked upon as heathen in the  sixteenth century. There is a manuscript from the tenth century in which the Kyrgyz are located near Kashkar, where they live now. He adds, however, that most of the extant sources, such as the Mahmud al-Kasghari, do not mention them. At the time of the Kara-Kita Empire (which in the twelfth century reached from the Yenisey to Talas), the Kyrgyz still lived near the Yenisey River. The Kyrgyz were heavily embroiled in the continual warfare that went on until the sixteenth century. During the second half of the fifteenth century, the Kyrgyz moved to the Tien Shan area. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Kyrgyz fought heavy battles against the Kalmaks of Jungaria (also known as Kalmaks, Kalmïks or Oyrats). These struggles are often seen as the inspiration for the battles in the Manas epic.

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer’s thoughts and notes

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La Fondazione Marino Marini ospita a Pistoia dal 12 aprile al 16 giugno 2019 una mostra personale intitolata "12 Moons", curata dal fotografo Alessandro Niccolai, e dedicata alla fotografa taiwanese Gao Yuan.

All'interno della mostra si propongono opere in cui le iconografie tipiche della tradizione pittorica fiorentina diventano un mezzo nuovo per la rappresentazione di uno spaccato della società della Cina contemporanea.  La struttura compositiva è quella tipica della Madonna con Bambino tardo rinascimentale e tipico di quel periodo è anche il colore e l'uso della luce. E' così che in "12 Moons" le giovani madri cinesi provenienti dalle classi più disagiate incontrando la tradizione pittorica fiorentina elevano la propria condizione. Il tentativo è quello di rappresentare una nuova Cina attraverso il significato allegorico che il riferimento alla tradizione pittoria italiana conferisce alle opere.

Gao Yuan è affermata, come fotografa, da ormai molti anni a livello internazionale...Stati Uniti, Europa, Asia. Ha ricevuto premi importanti e esposto con Cindy Sherman e Diane Arbus.

Opening: 12/03/2019Durata: dal 12/0372019 al 16/06/2019

Curatore: Alessandro NiccolaiMostra: "21 moons" di Gao Yuan

Presso: Fondazione Marino Marini, Corso Silvano Fedi, 30, 51100 Pistoia PT

http://www.fondazionemarinomarini.it/

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Niccolai’s Exhibition at Marino Marini Museum.

Photographs of Japan.

Kyoto Tokyo Fukushima

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Walking around…

Seoul…

Chapter II…

Alessandro Niccolai

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A day in Venice during the Carnival… a city that is half fairy tale and half tourist trap. For me its beauty is flattering and suspect. Always fascinating.

Alessandro Niccolai

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The actual history of Kyrgyzstan begins in 1924, when the territory was first plotted to a map. Within the larger framework of the Soviet Union, the Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was drawn up as a separate political and administrative unit. By 1936, this unit had become a sovereign Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), one of the eleven (later: fifteen) SSRs that made up the Soviet Union. Of course, this delineation was not contrived in a historical vacuum but was built upon existing ideas of a certain population living in a certain area.

In ancient times nomadic federations advance over large stretches of land, looting and destroying towns and cities, until the nomads settle down themselves, form settled civilisations that are destroyed by new nomadic federations in their turn. This meta-analysis has given rise to stereotypical images of nomadic peoples that are violent and freedom-loving versus settled groups that are industrious, religious and sustain high culture. When put to the test of the data on present-day Kyrgyzstan, however, the pattern fails. Nomadic groups often forced each other out of their territories, living peacefully alongside settler groups at the same time. Generally, the Tien Shan mountains are seen as cradles of nomadic groups, whereas the Ferghana valley gave rise to a number of urban civilisations. In 130 BC, for example, a Chinese diplomat who travelled Central Asia found a settled group, the Davan, in the Ferghana valley and a nomadic state of Wu-sun in the mountains. These groups are both remembered in Kyrgyzstan by compelling anecdotes. The Davan were the owners of the legendary ‘Heavenly Horses’. The Chinese were keen on obtaining these to use them in their battles against the Xiong-nu (probably the Huns). They sent two armies to fight the Davan, in 103 and 101 BC, and only obtained the desired horses when they defeated the Davan in the second campaign. Of the Wu-sun, a seventh-century Chinese writer wrote the following: the Wu-sun differ greatly in their appearance from other foreigners of the Western lands. To-day the Turks with blue eyes and red beards, resembling apes, are their descendants. During my fieldwork, I found that this comment had been modified into my informants’ frequent assertion that ‘the Kyrgyz used to look like Europeans, with red hair and blue eyes’. Interesting is the difference in assessment of the physical features – ape-like to the Chinese, which was probably a low-status qualification, and European-like to present-day Kyrgyz, that they generally regard as a high-status qualification. Also interesting is that in this case, my Kyrgyz informants traced their ancestry back to the early inhabitants of present-day Kyrgyzstan. Commonly, the ancestor Kyrgyz are considered to be a people that migrated from Siberia. It is possible, of course, that in popular historiography the comment on the Wu-sun is taken entirely out of context and transferred to the Siberian ancestors. In later years, the area was inhabited by members of the nomadic federation of the Juan Juan, and other nomadic empires such as the Kök-Türk, the Karluks  and the khanate of Chingiz-Khan’s son Chagatai. The urbanbased Karakhanid state was the first Islamic state in present-day Kyrgyzstan. In the tenth century it had power centres in Talas and Kashkar, and later also in present-day Uzbekistan’s cities of Samarkhand and Buchara. However, not all empires that held power over the area can easily be defined as nomadic or settled. A second distinction has therefore been brought forward. The early inhabitants of Kyrgyzstan’s territory are also identified as Iranian, Turkic or otherwise, usually by a reference to their language. As I have mentioned, the early Sakas were said to have spoken an Iranian language. The first Turks appeared on the scene in the sixth century AD. They are referred to as the Kök-Türk (Blue or Celestial Turks). Their khaganate gained momentum in 552, when the last Juan Juan khan was defeated. Present-day Kyrgyzstan fell under the Western khanate when it split in 581. The Kök-Türk are remembered by my informants because of their so-called Orkhon Inscriptions. In 1889, a Russian expedition to Mongolia uncovered two monuments to Bilge Khan and his brother Kül Tigin in the valley of the river Orkhon. These monuments were adorned with runic inscriptions that are important to the present-day Kyrgyz because they mention a Kyrgyz people at the Yenisey River. At the Yenisey River itself, similar runic inscriptions have been found. Other Turkic states have been formed by the Seljuk, a branch of the Oguz Turks and the empire ruled by Timur, also known as Timur-i-leng or Tamerlane. However, most of the empires that extended their influence over present-day Kyrgyzstan cannot be identified by one clear ethnic background. The Kara-Kitai, for example, are described by Kwanten as the refugee descendants of another empire, the Ch’i-tan empire. He explains that scholars still debate whether they were Tungusic, Mongol or Turkic. In many versions of the Manas epic, the Kara-Kitai are mentioned as Manas’ main enemies. According to B.M. Yunusaliev, the Kara-Kitai are also known as Kidan in the epic, which appears to be the same word as Ch’i-tan. Nowadays, the word Kitai is used for China and the Chinese, but considering the above, care should be taken in identifying Manas’ Kara-Kitai enemies as a group of ethnic Chinese (ibid., see also chapter four). The Kara-Kitai were ousted by the Nayman, another name that occurs in Manas versions, and whose ethnic affiliation is obscure. They were on the run from Mongols, but later referred to as Mongols themselves. The subsequent Chagatai khanate is described as a loose coalition of Türks, Uighurs, Kara-Kitais, Persians and others under the leadership of a tiny Mongol minority. After Chagatai’s death, the khanate became politically unstable and was ruled by eighteen subsequent khans, until its division in 1338 into Transoxiana and Mogholistan. Most of present-day Kyrgyzstan fell under Mogholistan, Moghol being the word used by the Mongols to denote Turkic peoples. The previously mentioned Timur, who was born in a Turkic family, came next. When he died, present-day Kyrgyzstan went back to being Mogholistan and was ruled by Mongol leaders who had to deal with Turkic coup attempts. All of this clearly indicates that the population was not reducible to one single ethnic group. The third recurring element in the description of Kyrgyzstan’s history is the division between North and South. This division, that is so important today, is recovered in past epochs. The situation of the urban Davan in the South versus the nomadic Wu-sun in the North is paralleled in the eighteenth and nineteenth century by the Southern Kyrgyz who were part of the Khanate of Kokhand and the Northern Kyrgyz who fell outside of Khokand and were either independent, or under Russian and Chinese rule. In the sixteenth century, the occupation of this area was taken up by the Kazakh and the Kyrgyz . This is where the two story-lines – the history of the territory of Kyrgyzstan and the history of the Kyrgyz people – collide. Before returning to this point, I will summarise the historiography of the Kyrgyz ethnic group. History of the Kyrgyz The Kyrgyz are traced back to the third century BC, when Chinese annals speak of a people called the Hehun. Kyrgyzstani scholars argue that these must be the Kyrgyz, because they are also referred to as Hyan-hun, Kigu or Chigu. These people lived in Southern Siberia, along the River Yenisey or one of its sources in the Altai mountains, over 1,000 km north-east of presentday Kyrgyzstan. According to Barthold, the Hehun people were not originally Turkic but Samoyedic, just like the Uralic peoples who live along the Yenisey River today. Around the sixth to eighth centuries AD, Greek, Chinese, Arab and Uygur sources mention a Kyrgyz state halfway along the Yenisey River. According to Mokrynin and Ploskich, the names used in these sources closely resemble the word Kyrgyz. Greek sources speak of Kherkis and Khirkhiz, Arab sources of Khyrgyz or Khyrkhyz, Chinese Syatszyasy or Tszilitszisy, and Uygur and Sogdi texts speak of Kyrgyz. However, most of the available information about this group comes from a number of Chinese sources, which use names that can be transliterated in various ways. Liu speaks of Ki-ku, Chien-k’un or Hsia-ch’a-ssu, Wittfogel and Chia-Shêng add Ko-k’un, Chieh-ku, Ho-ku and Hoku-ss. They remark that according to Barthold, these terms are a crude transcriptions by the Chinese of the original word best transcribed as ki-li-ki-si. The variety of ethnonyms indicates that the contribution of specific information to the ancestors of the present-day Kyrgyz is problematic, to say the least. Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that the people who are called Kyrgyz today are descendants from these ‘Kyrgyz’ in Siberia. Still, present-day Kyrgyz feel related to these ‘Kyrgyz’, and base their history on secondary information from the Chinese sources. In this interpretation, the Kyrgyz were the people who fought a fierce battle with the Uygurs in 840 AD. The Kyrgyz won and destroyed the Uygur capital Karabalghasun. They were not interested in trade, and after having turned Orkhon into a backwater they were driven away from it by the Khitans fifty years later. In Suji in present-day Mongolia, a text has been found that was written in ‘Kyrgyz letters’, a rhunic script similar to the above-mentioned Orkhon Inscriptions. It is dated to the ninth or tenth century and contains eleven verses, the first of which are translated as: ‘I have come from Uygur ground, called Yaklagar-Khan. I am a son of the Kyrgyz.’. The Kyrgyz are mentioned again in connection to the conquest of a Karluk town in 982. Barthold writes: At that time the Qirgiz lived in the upper basin of the Yenisey, where, according to Chinese sources, they were visited every three years by Arab caravans carrying silk from Kucha. […] It is possible that the Qirghiz, having allied themselves with the Qarluk, took the field against the Toquz-Oghuz and occupied that part of Semirechyé which is their present home. In any case, the bulk of the Qirghiz migrated into the Semirechyé considerably later. Had they lived in the Semirechyé at the time of the Qarakhanids, they would have been converted to Islam in the tenth or eleventh century. As it is, they were still looked upon as heathen in the  sixteenth century. There is a manuscript from the tenth century in which the Kyrgyz are located near Kashkar, where they live now. He adds, however, that most of the extant sources, such as the Mahmud al-Kasghari, do not mention them. At the time of the Kara-Kita Empire (which in the twelfth century reached from the Yenisey to Talas), the Kyrgyz still lived near the Yenisey River. The Kyrgyz were heavily embroiled in the continual warfare that went on until the sixteenth century. During the second half of the fifteenth century, the Kyrgyz moved to the Tien Shan area. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Kyrgyz fought heavy battles against the Kalmaks of Jungaria (also known as Kalmaks, Kalmïks or Oyrats). These struggles are often seen as the inspiration for the battles in the Manas epic.

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer's thoughts and notes

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At the MAMbo museum of Bologna (Italy) over 70 artworks – outstanding masterpieces from the State Russian Museum of St. Petersburg display the developing styles and the dynamics of development of artists such as Nathan Altman, Natalia Goncharova,Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Valentin Serov andAlexandr Rodchenko among the others, showing the extraordinary modernity of Russian cultural movements at the beginning of twentieth century: from Primitivism to Cubo-futurism, up to Suprematism, at the same time building a chronological parallel between figurative Expressionism and pure Abstractionism.

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer’s thoughts and notes

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Blue Fields is a series of beautiful aerial photographs depicting Australian salt fields taken by photographer Simon Butterworth using a DJI Phantom 2 drone. From above, the photographs resemble paintings thanks to the swirling blue colors of the salt fields.

Alessandro Niccolai

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Prague is a fascinating and, in a certain sense, dark city…walking in the streets, in these days, makes me have a fascination with the dark, maybe because i come from a sunnier country. It offers a compact city center, a fascinating centuries-long history, splendid examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance and Art Nouveau architecture, scores of palaces, churches, parks and squares…it’s a multi-cultural city of art, full of connections to mysteries and legends. Some of my stops were at bookstores and second hand bookstores too.

Prague is a Magic City, and not without reason.

                                                                                        Alessandro Niccolai

Alessandro Niccolai

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London-based photographer Martin Usborne shot poignant images of dogs in cars as a personal project. Those images are now being made into a book titled Dogs In Cars, A Photography Art Book. He recently began a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter to cover the book’s publishing costs.

“The images in this series explore that feeling, both in relation to myself and to animals in general. The camera is the perfect tool for capturing a sense of silence and longing: the shutter freezes the subject for ever and two layers of glass are placed between the viewer and the viewed: the glass of the lens, the glass of the picture frame and, in this instance, the glass of the car window further isolates the animal. The dog is truly trapped”.

Alessandro Niccolai

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..the illusion that the comprehension has taken place..

Alessandro Niccolai

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This is why i don’t need a tv.....

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer’s thoughts and notes

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Snow is always evocative and has such a powerful atmosphere...

Firenze (Florence), Italy

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer’s thoughts and notes

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...where i am connected with everything.

Alessandro Niccolai  Photographer

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Realising a photographic reportage in Tajikistan is not easy and requires a good capacity of adaption but, in return, one will live a memorable experience among majestic natural landscapes and a harsh daily life that forged the various peoples living in the country, a place that has always been a crossroads of empires and cultures. Tajikistan is really the throbbing heart of Eurasia, whose beats are characterised by the earthquakes often affecting more remote and isolated areas. In this region you can admire fantastic peaks, but Tajikistan many other attractions, as the area called “of seven lakes” on the slopes of Fann Mountains, not far from the very ancient town of Penjikent, in the past a centre of the Zoroastrianism.

The republic has relied heavily on Russian assistance to counter continuing security problems and cope with the dire economic situation. Russian forces guarded sections of the border with Afghanistan until mid-2005 when their withdrawal was completed and the task handed over to Tajik border guards. Skirmishes with drug smugglers crossing illegally from Afghanistan occur regularly, as Tajikistan is the first stop on the drugs route from there to Russia and the West.

The meetings with Tajiks not leave a person indifferent surely, especially if one will attend to the traditional ceremonies, as the “dance of eagle”. Falling in love of this country is very easy The Tajik language is very close to Persian, spoken in Iran, and to Dari, spoken in Afghanistan. Tajiks are different in History, ethnic origin and religion as well from the other Central Asian peoples. Part of population in Tajikistan practises a different school of Islam compared to neighbouring countries. Tajikistan brings together different worlds; here was the border of Persian Empire, here passed certain routes of the Silk Road. The Uzbek Samarkand and Buchara once were Tajik cities, while today the North of Tajikistan has an important Uzbek population, all legacies of a past here certainly not without unrests. Gazing upon the wonder that is Tajikistan, is a rare privilege indeed, as very seldom do travellers venture into this region. From the breathtaking landscapes of the Fann and Zarafshan Mountains in the northwest, to the diverse and uniquely cultured people of the Murghab Plateau, the endangered fauna in the remotes corners of Bartang and Wakhan Valleys, to thrilling white water rafting and climbing opportunities one will get irreplaceable memories that few places on earth can provide.

Alessandro Niccolai   A photographer’s thoughts and notes

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The best part of the beauty of Firenze (Florence) is that which no picture can really  express...you just have to come and see... Here you can find the taste, that is love of beauty....and the art, that is creation of beauty...

Alessandro Niccolai  Photographer

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Alessandro Niccolai

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