Hunza 2
. Hunza in Transition: Now and Then... and Then Again
JULIE FLOWERDAY
mile Durkheim, a significant social theorist of the last century, observed that in the process of a society informing itself of its environment, it produces environment as an image of itself.1 That is all well and good, but what happens when a society’s image of the environment shifts so much that the earlier and later versions are irreconcilable? Such was the case I faced in Central Hunza during my dissertation research (-). The objective of this anthropological investigation was to explore the relationship between changing landscape and shifting knowledge.
E
For this purpose, I used photographs of landscape and cultural activities from the s to visually interpret cultural changes which occurred in the following sixty years, up to the s. The late Colonel David
Lorimer, a former British colonial political agent, took plenty of photographs during his linguistic re-
Fig. . Baltit fort and fields (D. Lorimer, -).
Fig. . Baltit fort and bazaar (J. Flowerday, ).
Fig. . Baltit fort and village (D. Lorimer, -).
Fig. . Baltit fort and Karimabad village (J. Flowerday, ).
search in the area in the mid s. Based on his work, I later produced an exhibition called Hunza in Treble Vision: s and s (-). Old photographs taken by Lorimer were displayed alongside new photographs I took at the same sites in the s. A set of two contrasting photographs – presented as single and double vision, respectively, highlighted the diminished importance of early sites. I affixed a third photograph to each pair, to document changes in culture, and arranged these sets, which I called ‘treble vision’, thematically, to draw attention to shifts in socio-political power, economy, environment and the rise of the nation-state.
In the discussion below, which builds upon this earlier work, I will focus in greater detail on residents’ understanding of the
JULIE FLOWERDAY
mile Durkheim, a significant social theorist of the last century, observed that in the process of a society informing itself of its environment, it produces environment as an image of itself.1 That is all well and good, but what happens when a society’s image of the environment shifts so much that the earlier and later versions are irreconcilable? Such was the case I faced in Central Hunza during my dissertation research (-). The objective of this anthropological investigation was to explore the relationship between changing landscape and shifting knowledge.
E
For this purpose, I used photographs of landscape and cultural activities from the s to visually interpret cultural changes which occurred in the following sixty years, up to the s. The late Colonel David
Lorimer, a former British colonial political agent, took plenty of photographs during his linguistic re-
Fig. . Baltit fort and fields (D. Lorimer, -).
Fig. . Baltit fort and bazaar (J. Flowerday, ).
Fig. . Baltit fort and village (D. Lorimer, -).
Fig. . Baltit fort and Karimabad village (J. Flowerday, ).
search in the area in the mid s. Based on his work, I later produced an exhibition called Hunza in Treble Vision: s and s (-). Old photographs taken by Lorimer were displayed alongside new photographs I took at the same sites in the s. A set of two contrasting photographs – presented as single and double vision, respectively, highlighted the diminished importance of early sites. I affixed a third photograph to each pair, to document changes in culture, and arranged these sets, which I called ‘treble vision’, thematically, to draw attention to shifts in socio-political power, economy, environment and the rise of the nation-state.
In the discussion below, which builds upon this earlier work, I will focus in greater detail on residents’ understanding of the