An imported visage of Azərbaycan (Azerbaijan)

A few months ago...well more than a few (August last year) I decided to conduct a small project to continue and hopefully push my creative thinking during my long summer 'sans-voyages'. I hadn't travelled nor created any new 'work' by all means, due partly to my lack of travel and my apparent lack of enthusiasm post-studies. I decided to contact a few friends who were away in foreign countries at the time, these friends I feel know something about my work and have some knowledge of my practice and my likes/dislikes and my ideas of how representation of 'place' is important within my work.

I asked these friends if I could send them each a camera to use, with a set of instructions and ideas to shoot a roll of film which I would then process on its return. I sent cameras to Romania and Azerbaijan, both countries I had previously visited and both countries I felt were significant places with regard to my previous photographic work.

The instructions I gave advised them to 'think of the camera as me'. I wrote to them, 'If I was there - with you, what would I photograph?'

Below is a selection of photographs from the Azerbaijan segment of this project.

© All images copyright Philip Mowbray & KJ