Elliott Verdier is a French photographer who attracted attention many awards for his reports on the human condition he has documented in different parts of the world. He has traveled Indonesia with Afghan refugees, explored Myanmar (Burma) with drug addicts in a rehab center and explored his way through Mongolia in the polluted suburbs of Ulaanbaatar. As of late, Elliott has decided to dedicate his photography to long term projects, far from hot news, entering into intimacy of the people he makes pictures of mostly with his 4×5 large format camera.
A Shaded Path
During a four month excursion in Kyrgyzstan, I worked to portray this unknown country through a large format camera focused on the faces of the inhabitants of the landscape. This work highlights the generational disparities between those nostalgic of an abolished USSR order and modern westernized youths born after the fall. It covers the trials of a young, woebegone country struggling to simultaneously form a national identity and keep pace with a global economy. Relics of a past era mingle with the faces of a population frozen in transition.
To view more of Elliott’s work please visit his website.