The New York Times has published a stunning series of images of Xinjiang taken by photographer Carolyn Drake:
Ms. Drake is based in Istanbul. “Paradise Rivers,” her long-term, three-part project chronicling five former Soviet republics, was featured on Lens in October 2010. She was traveling through Central Asia for that project when she decided to cross into China.
Ms. Drake returned to the oil-rich Xinjiang with a grant in 2008 and visited a number of times that year on 30-day visas. As she made friends in the community, she started getting an insight into the culture. But the atmosphere changed when she returned in the summer of 2009, a week after violent clashes took place in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital.
And so Ms. Drake is determined to explore the change that is happening in the region. “The story, I know, is continuing,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to stop just because it was published.”
