In portraying villagers at leisure in and around their homes, Durdy Bayramov offers an intriguing glimpse of Turkmen clothing, shelter, family life, landscape, and traditions. Women are shown as the gatekeepers of their homes and caretakers of their families and communities. They wore long dresses, or koynek, over embroidered balak trousers, and a headscarf known as a yaglyk. Turkmen men were historically animal herders and spent most of their time outside. Their everyday attire consisted of a long robe called a don and a sheep wool hat, or telpek, which protected them from overheating in the summer and from cold air in winter.

We also see lively young people engaged in activities similar to those enjoyed by their peers in cities, such as playing ball with friends, learning how to draw, or riding bicycles. Durdy Bayramov expertly and lovingly captured the powerful feelings of comradery and community that radiate from these scenes.

Durdy Bayramov’s ability to recognize and portray the determined resilience of the Turkmen people is revealed in these images. Despite the challenging conditions and difficult work, a profound sense of pride is evident on the faces of the men and women pictured. Villagers are seen working together in their dwellings and workshops, clearly illustrating how work was intimately woven into other aspects of Turkmen village life.

Women are typically seen working in the domestic realm—cooking ethnic Turkmen meals, baking bread, picking mulberry leaves to raise silkworms, and making carpets or felt rugs known as keche. Exclusively, women artisans are the makers of Turkmen carpets and keche. The complicated skills and techniques involved in this work have for centuries been passed down from mother to daughter. Men are shown at work in the fields dutifully cultivating fruits, vegetables, and cotton, and herding sheep and other livestock. The people and scenes depicted so beautifully by Bayramov in these photographs serve as a reminder of how work can bind communities together through mutual effort and shared accomplishment.

Each of Durdy Bayramov’s portraits tells a compelling story of the person behind the image. They reveal the inner worlds of his subjects and also provide insight on this period of history. Since these portraits were taken after the Second World War, many of the subjects proudly pinned to their clothing the medals they received for serving in the war or assisting with the war effort. Being photographed would have been a rare and important event for many villagers, and they would have carefully selected their attire. Women wore the white scarf they saved for special occasions, while some men wore European-style shirts or even suits.

It is evident that Bayramov especially liked to photograph older people. This desire stemmed from his continued search for the parents he lost in his youth. When photographing older people, in every face he searched for a glimpse of his mother or father, hoping to realize his dream to be reunited with his parents. Through these poignant images, Bayramov transforms everyday villagers into iconic representations of Turkmenistan’s culture and history, never predicting that they would be displayed and appreciated in other countries by people unfamiliar with Turkmen culture.

Through the Eyes of Durdy Bayramov: Turkmen Village Life, 1960s-80s is accompanied by a fully illustrated, 127 page exhibition catalogue written by Keyik Bayramova, Robert Pontsioen, and Jeren Balayeva, and includes an introduction by Dr. Paul Taylor, Director of the Asian Cultural History Program and Curator of Asian, Middle Eastern, and European Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. This beautiful catalogue provides in-depth analysis of the historical and artistic significance of Durdy Bayramov’s photographs, and features 102 black-and-white plates from the exhibition.

Through insightful interpretive essays, the catalogue explains how the photographs in this exhibition convey Bayramov’s deep respect for Turkmen culture and shed light on what motivated and inspired this gifted artist. According to WorldCat, the world’s largest library catalogue, this book has been accessioned in more than 85 public, academic, and museum libraries around the world. It was published in 2015 by the Durdy Bayramov Art Foundation, in association with the Asian Cultural History Program, Smithsonian Institution.