It’s been a challenging task, and at stages it has been an incredibly rewarding process for Pyle. The task at hand, is still that of documenting a culture and a way of life that is struggling to come to grips with an ever expanding Chinese presence throughout the region. This struggle, in Pyle’s opinion, will always exist at some level; and his documentary project may never have a finite ending because of that. But still he continues to visit the region several times a year, capturing glimpses of a culture on its last legs – so to speak.
Xinjiang was in the news for all of the wrong reasons during much of July and August for ethnic riots in the city of Urumqi. And while Urumqi was clearly the flashpoint, the rest of China’s largest province remains relatively calm as the local population comes to terms with the development goals of the regional government. Below is a link to a series of new work, some of which was included in a gallery show in Toronto, Canada in August 2009.
The New Work:
LINK:http://archive.ryanpyle.com/c/ryanpyle/gallery/Sales-New-Chinese-Turkistan/G00001hSDzsCvEgI