Dieter Seitz

In his photographs, Dieter Seitz narrates a journey that begins in the original nomad's land and ends in the cities of Kazakhstan, the homeland of today's urban nomads. Seitz is interested in the lives of people involved in the cultural interplay between East and West; between the Soviet Era and the new Kazakhstan; between revitalized folklore and the modern consumer world. Impressions of still-visible devastation from the crisis years after 1991 can be found alongside sensitive portraits; the many facets of this country full of various peoples of more than 100 ethnicities are palpable in this volume. Seitz's photographs measure continuity, decay and the comeback of a post-Soviet society, impressively tracing the cultural topography of one of the largest transformational societies in the heart of Eurasia. An essay by Markus Kaiser outlines the sociocultural backgrounds of the development in Kazakhstan, right at the geopolitical intersection between Europe and Asia.