Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country with 5 million people living on a territory the size of California, has grown more and more remote from the rest of the world since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The oppressive regime rarely permits journalists to enter, but photographer Pavel Prokopchik had an opportunity to travel there recently and used his journey to document everyday life.
PAVEL PROKOPCHIK
photographer, the Netherlands
Pavel Prokopchik was born in Russia in 1982. He grew up in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. In 2001, he moved to the Netherlands, graduating from The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague in 2009. Since then Prokopchik has received a number of national awards, including Zilveren Camera and Photo Academy awards. His passion for photography lies in telling stories about people who live their lives out of sight of mainstream society—deviants from regular religious practices, hippies, and other people who are not a part of a materialistic society. His latest exhibition was The Tribe, a series of photos following a group of people living an alternative lifestyle in Russia, and was held in the FOAM photography museum in Amsterdam.
