An evening with North Adams native & documentary photographer Kevin Bubriski, in conversation with photographer Holly Lynton. In 1998, Bubriski lived among the Uyghurs in Kashgar. In the just-published The Uyghurs: Kashgar before the Catastrophe, Bubriski has created an unforgettable portrait of the Uyghurs and of the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar before the Chinese government’s decimation of the religion, language, culture, and personal freedom. Today, Uyghurs and the mostly Han government clash over who has greater historical claim to the Xinjiang region. This struggle of native rights has led to the detainment of over 1 million Uyghur people in camps where they have been subjected to torture, forced labor, religious restrictions, and even forced sterilization.

With the intent that through photographs mutual understanding between people might be fostered, Bubriski was drawn to the faces of ordinary people and their daily lives. These exquisite photographic portraits and street scenes reveal a haunting beauty and sense of the city’s deep past.

Bubriski’s photographs are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, Asian Cultural Council, Hasselblad Masters, and Robert Gardner Peabody Museum fellowships.

Bubriski’s other books include Portrait of Nepal (Chronicle, 1993), which won the 1993 First Place Golden Light Documentary book award, Power Places of Kathmandu (Inner Traditions/Thames & Hudson, 1995), Pilgrimage: Looking at Ground Zero (powerHouse, 2002), Nepal 1975–2011 (Radius Books/Peabody Museum Press, 2014), Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida, ‘81–’83 (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016), Legacy in Stone: Syria before War (powerHouse, 2018), Our Voices, Our Streets: American Protests 2001–2011 (powerHouse, 2020), and Nepal Earthquake (Himal Books, 2022).