Ruthven, Malise, author.

Traveller through time : a photographic journey with Freya Stark / Malise Ruthven.

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, [1986]
©1986

141 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

" 'One should never look out direct on a landscape, but have an interval of cool shadow, like the eyelash to the eye,' writes Freya Stark in one of her letters. Brought up in Devon and Italy by artist parents, her eye was both natural and educated: a fact revealed not only in the masterful descriptions of landscape and architecture in her voluminous writings, but in the thousands of photographs she took in the course of her travels. Freya Stark's unique collection of photographs, taken between the 1920s and 1970s, range from North Africa to the Levant, South Arabia to Turkey, Persia and places further east, including Soviet Central Asia and China. Landscape, architecture and people are equally well represented in her collection, which comprises some 6000 prints. Her eye for landscape embraces mountains from the Alps to the Himalayas, rivers from the wild gorges of the Tigris to the peaceful Orontes, the arid wastes of Central Asia and the lush palm-groves of the Wadi Hadhramaut. Her passion for ancient history sent her in pursuit of Alexander of Anatolia and Xenophon near the Helespont, and to seek out the frontiers of Rome in the wilds of Kurdistan. Her admiration for the art and traditions of Islam enabled her to catch the tranquility of a Seljuk Kan or the medieval bustle of an Aleppo souk. Her love for open spaces drove her to seek hospitality among Shamar Bedouin, Kashgar herdsmen, Kurdish camel-herders and yurt-dwelling Turkomans. Fearless and indomitable, Freya Stark travelled alone as a woman where few European men had dared to venture. Her good-humoured persistence, her command of languages, her instant wit, her cunning and her tact enabled her to find friends and protectors wherever she went. Many of her most interesting pictures are of women, in their traditional costumes, for her sex enable her to overcome the taboo that often prevents European men from photographing women in the East. Many of her pictures evoke a world that has again become inaccessible, like the mud-brick sky-scrapers of South Arabia (now Marxist South Yemen), the forbidden Rock of Alamut in Persia (now the xenophobic Iran of the Ayatollahs); or which has disappeared for ever, like the pontoons over Euphrates at Baghdad or the crumbling mud walls of Kuwait City. Now in her 93rd year, Dame Freya has entrusted her collection to her godson Malise Ruthven, son of her wartime secretary. To accompany them, he as found suitable captions from Freya Stark's own writings and written a short memoir describing the major events of her long, rich and colourful life."-- Page 2 of cover.

0670801836 (hardcover)
9780670801831 (hardcover)

Stark, Freya.
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Women Middle East specialists
Travel Stark, Freya - Biographies

Biographies

Stark, Freya.

Traveler through time
Photographic journey with Freya Stark

Localisation: Bibliothèque main 83358
Cote: ID:86-B16175
Statut: Disponible