Profotos Staff Evaluation:

The wonderous peoples and landscapes of Central Asia are captured on film in magnificent fashion by professional photographer, Vladimir Jirnov. Working and living in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, Vladimir has proven himself to be one of the top travel photographers & photojournalists in this area of the world.

Since 1985, Vladimir has been shooting in-and-around his home country of Uzbekistan, producing documentary photographs of his homeland and his people. For over six years, Vladimir worked as the single staff photo reporter for "Saodat," Central Asia's largest magazine with a monthly sales volume of over one million copies! This was quite a job for one photographer/reporter to handle.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992, Vladimir opened the first advertising agency in Uzbekistan, where he and his associates produced calendars, brochures, advertising articles, and more. This tenure lasted for only 3 years, until 1995, when Vladimir decided to return to photography full-time as a freelance travel photographer/photojournalist. This calling back to full-time photography can be best described in Vladimir's own words, "a photographer has to be a photographer."

We are glad that Vladimir chose his first passion as his career decision, as the images in his portfolio are excellent examples of the peoples and landscapes of Central Asia. To be a foreign photographer travelling to a strange land in search of capturing images of indigenous peoples is often a very difficult job, as the photographer almost always stands out to the native people, who may not act naturally in this setting. However, to be a native photographing your own people as Vladimir does, one can capture amazing images of these same peoples much easier as they will not be as uncomfortable around the native photographer.

Our staff enjoyed building the Profotos portfolio of this travel photography master and it is our hope that you will be able to see into the faces of the peoples in these images, and know what they are feeling and thinking. This is a great presentation of an obscure part of the former U.S.S.R. - Uzbekistan as seen through the lenses of master photographer Vladimir Jirnov.