Uzbekistan sent a chilling warning to its photographers and artists this week by convicting, Umida Akhmedova, the acclaimed photographer and documentary filmmaker, in a slander trial that harked back to the days of Soviet censorship.
Can a photographer actually be guilty of defamation for taking photographs that reveal poverty rather than the cherubic photographs of put out by the tourist board?
A Khafkaesque panel of experts convened by the prosecutors said that by showing children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change, people with dour expressions or their heads bowed "a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages."
Umida's conviction on Wednesday of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people has stirred outrage in artistic circles in the region, though sadly not in the Wast. The judge waived the jail term of three years, in a nod to the ridicule it would have heaped on the country and said that Ms. Akhmedova had been granted an amnesty in honor of the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence.
As she walked free from the court, Ms. Akhmedova said she had been so deeply shaken by the prosecution that it was difficult to feel relief.
"I can't say my anxiety has subsided, I can't say I'm suddenly O.K.," she said. "There was a fear of going to prison. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that's the main thing. I still don't understand how my creative work could have brought me to this courtroom."
Asked if she expected to be able to publish her photography in Uzbekistan in the future, she said, "I am afraid not."
Ms. Akhmedova intends to appeal the conviction.
The Uzbek authorities have a habit of prosecuting artists who brush with controversy. The folk singer Dadakhon Khasanov, who wrote a song about the 2005 crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Andijon, in which hundreds died was proescuted.
Ms. Akhmedova broke new ground by singling out a visual artist for her work who avoided political themes. .
The project "Women and Men: From Dawn to Dusk," a book published in 2007, and "The Burden of Virginity," a documentary film released the following year - both underwritten with grants from the Swiss Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital - caused fury with the authorities
no less than six government 'experts' declared that the film, which explores the tradition of checking a new bride's virginity, is "not in line with the requirements of ideology," and that it "promotes serious perversion in the young generation's acceptance of cultural values."
The government's exhaustive criminal complaint argued that Ms. Akhmedova's photographs intentionally showed Uzbekistan in a poor light. One photograph that shows a young boy lying on the mud floor of a bare boards house was held up a prime exhibit in the case.
"With one glance at these pictures one can see that repair work is being done in these rooms, and that the children entered them purely through the childish curiosity that is inherent to them," the complaint reads. "But to foreigners, these photographs may give the impression that these children live in these homes."
In all the photographs, "the images of the human face seem sad and anxious, they are portrayed against an excessively pathetic background," it says. "This vision excludes the beautiful landscape of our homeland, the remarkable spaces of our cities."
The charges prompted dismay fellow photographers. Petitions were circulated in Ms. Akhmedova's defense and exhibits of her work were held in in Minsk, the capital of neighbouring Belarus (another authoritarian state), as well as the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.
Daniil Kislov, editor in chief of Ferghana.ru, which turned the case into a cause celebre said the publicity probably prompted the authorities to grant Ms. Akhmedova amnesty on Wednesday.
"This case was supposed to be an example to the rest of them -- to photographers, artists and so on -- so they know they need to portray reality the way it looks to the government," Mr. Kislov said. But as Russian media picked up the story, it became clear that the case reflected badly on Uzbek officials.
"They really care about opinions in Moscow, from that cultured Moscow crowd, and they understood they had crossed a line," he said.
Notably quiet were Ms. Akhmedova's colleagues from Uzbekistan. Vyacheslav Akhunov, who lives in Tashkent and frequently exhibits his installations and video projects overseas, said artists in Uzbekistan were overwhelmingly dependent on the state to show and sell their work.
"The authorities want to show a rosy-cheeked face, a beautiful face, as if the wise rulers rule so well that nothing will ever happen," he said. "And 99 percent of artists are afraid to get involved in anything problematic."
See more of Umida's work here
And a slide show at CPJ.org
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