Friday, April 28, 2006
Say Cheese!
For about two blocks between the White House just west of Ala-Too square in the center of Bishkek east down Prospect Chui to Tsum, from early in the morning until well after dark every day of the week, the north side of the street is littered with photo booths. These aren't the sort of photo booths you might find in a mall or movie theatre with a ratty curtain pulled shut on a teenaged couple canoodling before a mechanized camera. These photo booths are more like public art installations designed by a tourism ministry with a miniscule budget and a fabulous eye for camp.
The thing is though, these booths aren't just for tourists (you're just as likely to see a Kyrgyz family posing as you are tourists, which there aren't too many of in the first place) and they're definitely not governmentally controlled. The booths are run by men (they all seem to be run by men, unlike virtually every other sort of service industry in Bishkek excepting taxis--bazaars, kiosks, restaurants: all women), men with old cameras and an eye for kitsch that could rival John Waters. If only they knew what they were doing was kitschy. There's a certain sincerity to the collections of toy cars, stuffed animals, fake trees, mannequins dressed as Father New Year or a snow leopard, trellises rung with plastic ivy and garland and proclaiming in hand-painted Cyrillic letters "Bishkek 2006" or "Happy New Year" or "Happy Nooruz." There are a number of such set-ups visible in the background in some of the pictures from Nooruz and the winter holidays among our pictures on Flickr (here and here, for instance).
E and I have long wanted a photo booth picture, but have been holding out either for something truly wonderful or for the right mood to strike. On Tuesday we found both. We were walking west on Chui heading from the direction of Tsum back toward the square. We had just come back up from the underground bazaar at the Chui/Moscovskaya intersection and were about halfway to the next corner when I tapped Erin on the shoulder and pointed off to our right.
"That," I said. "We need to do that."
Erin turned her head and gasped. Then, when her faculties were back up to full capacity, she nodded. We moved over to the guy lounging under the umbrella attached to his little stand and asked him how much. The picture ran twenty-five som, which is about sixty cents American, give or take.
Erin nodded and said, "Okay, excellent. We want that." She raised her arm and pointed to the plastic patio furniture sitting in the sun twenty feet away, two chairs flanking a table topped with a tower of plastic flowers and fronted with a couple of seemingly Bedazzled hearts. All of this sat in front of a sign that stood maybe six feet tall bookended by two braying horses, their front hooves at either side of a circular emblem reading "Bishkek 2006" in Russian above a picture of a mountain range, rays of sun, and, due to some brilliant stroke of Dadaist inspiration on the part of its creator, a smiling pink cartoon puppy. Because nothing says Bishkek like a smiling pink cartoon puppy.
"There?" the man asked.
"Most definitely," we replied.
You'll have to excuse the quality of the photo: as our resources are a bit slim here, rather than scan the photo I simply took a picture of it. Glare and a bit of fuzziness ensued. My apologies.
Filed under: Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, Photo Booths.
The thing is though, these booths aren't just for tourists (you're just as likely to see a Kyrgyz family posing as you are tourists, which there aren't too many of in the first place) and they're definitely not governmentally controlled. The booths are run by men (they all seem to be run by men, unlike virtually every other sort of service industry in Bishkek excepting taxis--bazaars, kiosks, restaurants: all women), men with old cameras and an eye for kitsch that could rival John Waters. If only they knew what they were doing was kitschy. There's a certain sincerity to the collections of toy cars, stuffed animals, fake trees, mannequins dressed as Father New Year or a snow leopard, trellises rung with plastic ivy and garland and proclaiming in hand-painted Cyrillic letters "Bishkek 2006" or "Happy New Year" or "Happy Nooruz." There are a number of such set-ups visible in the background in some of the pictures from Nooruz and the winter holidays among our pictures on Flickr (here and here, for instance).
E and I have long wanted a photo booth picture, but have been holding out either for something truly wonderful or for the right mood to strike. On Tuesday we found both. We were walking west on Chui heading from the direction of Tsum back toward the square. We had just come back up from the underground bazaar at the Chui/Moscovskaya intersection and were about halfway to the next corner when I tapped Erin on the shoulder and pointed off to our right.
"That," I said. "We need to do that."
Erin turned her head and gasped. Then, when her faculties were back up to full capacity, she nodded. We moved over to the guy lounging under the umbrella attached to his little stand and asked him how much. The picture ran twenty-five som, which is about sixty cents American, give or take.
Erin nodded and said, "Okay, excellent. We want that." She raised her arm and pointed to the plastic patio furniture sitting in the sun twenty feet away, two chairs flanking a table topped with a tower of plastic flowers and fronted with a couple of seemingly Bedazzled hearts. All of this sat in front of a sign that stood maybe six feet tall bookended by two braying horses, their front hooves at either side of a circular emblem reading "Bishkek 2006" in Russian above a picture of a mountain range, rays of sun, and, due to some brilliant stroke of Dadaist inspiration on the part of its creator, a smiling pink cartoon puppy. Because nothing says Bishkek like a smiling pink cartoon puppy.
"There?" the man asked.
"Most definitely," we replied.
You'll have to excuse the quality of the photo: as our resources are a bit slim here, rather than scan the photo I simply took a picture of it. Glare and a bit of fuzziness ensued. My apologies.
Filed under: Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, Photo Booths.
