Thursday, July 22, 2010

When art talks about the country...

Yesterday we went to personal photo exhibition of a good friend, Fakhriyya Mammadova.
Today with her permission my post will be written around one of the photos she has made.
It often happens that one wanders around the exhibits and some of them excite you, the others make you smile, think, relax etc...
There is this photo that you will see lower that talked to me...first I liked the colors, then I realized that its theme is so close to me...in awhile I knew that I want to share it with you...
You might have heard that there are places on this planet where gas emissions come out of earth and those parts of land are constantly in fire...these kind of areas exist close to Baku and one place is called Yanardag i.e. Burning Mountain. They say that this was the reason why Zoroastrians from India stayed in Azerbaijan when they were crossing the country...where it could be more natural to worship the fire if not here...
Centuries passed...you won't see people worshiping fire at Yanardag now but you would see tourists and native people that visit Burning Mountain and places alike to watch the fire and let it mesmerize them...some people would go, look at fire, take photos etc and leave; for Azeri would be also very natural to look for a place to sit and watch the fire for awhile thinking about everything and nothing...the only thing that would be lacking for a complete happiness at that moment would be...yes...tea :)) (could be unexpected for a foreigner but veeeery natural for Azeri. You can find my other posts on tea here and here:).
Well...what might seem a bit unusual and awkward thing to do for others is quite a comfortable thing for art person...this is how I imagine Fakhriyya ended up taking a photo of an after tea ceremony in Yanardag. This is purely my interpretation of the photo which maybe is far from reality but then when it comes to art one never knows when reality gives up to imagination...
Be well...and arty :)
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was there last week, with a group from Belgium. It was late, we were all tired but we stood silent and a little awed at the sight. Tea would indeed have been nice.