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A Bowlful Of Kumis
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A Bowlful of Kumis (2013-2022) is a decade-long visual and personal journey that begins in the Altai Republic and unfolds across Kyrgyzstan, exploring the intersections of everyday life, geopolitics, and mythology. It is a coming-of-age story for photographer Alexander Komenda, whose artistic evolution is deeply intertwined with the landscapes and people he encounters.
Speaking Russian has allowed Komenda to move beyond the role of observer—he is welcomed as a guest, a friend who just happens to take photographs. This trust grants access to moments of genuine intimacy, where the ordinary reveals its quiet power. Through these encounters, Komenda documents life shaped by both tradition and transition, using film photography to slow down the process and embrace reflection. The delay of analog practice allows for discovery in retrospect—subtleties emerge only after returning home, contact sheets in hand.
Structured chronologically and geographically, the book traces the arc from the mythic origins of the Kyrgyz people in Altai to the political complexities of contemporary Kyrgyzstan. Each chapter contributes to broader themes of identity, migration, post-Soviet transformation, and the resilience of everyday life. It reflects on how collective memory, the Manas epic, and lived experience continue to shape the cultural and political fabric of the region.
Komenda’s photographic approach is immersive and observational, avoiding spectacle in favor of quiet gestures. His work is a meditation on presence and belonging—on how history resides in daily rituals, how myth and reality intertwine, and how photography becomes a means to understand not only the world, but one’s place within it.
A Bowlful of Kumis is both a record of lives documented and a reflection of the photographer’s own transformation. It is a story about connection, presence, and the enduring significance of the mundane—bridging personal experience with universal themes through a lens of care, curiosity, and poetic observation.