CHINESE TURKESTAN - March 03, 2010
March 03, 2010March 3, 2010 at 7:00PM
CHINESE TURKESTAN
A lecture by award winning documentary photographer Ryan Pyle
Ryan Pyle has been visiting China’s western Xinjiang province regularly since 2001. Formerly known as Chinese Turkestan, this vast expanse of deserts and mountains has seemingly always been at a crossroads between cultures and time. For centuries, criminals, holy men, and traders tramped across the region; and it was out of this tradition that the Silk Road was established. Ryan has just returned to Toronto from a recent series of trips and is commencing a series of lectures on the fast paced development, and rapid loss of cultural heritage, in the region.
“The culture is vanishing before my eyes”, Ryan says, “each time I return something is missing: a market, an old shop full of blacksmiths, a local mosque”.
This talk is a continuation of, and an update to, Ryan's standing-room-only talk given at the Dylan Ellis Gallery in 2009.
(www.ryanpyle.com)