Holiday №396 – Samarkand

Holiday is an international, bi-annual publication. The team who conceives, designs and produces the magazine is based in Paris. It is written in English, but its heart is French.
In this issue, following a trip to Zurich, Holiday continues eastward and heads for Uzbekistan, specifically Samarkand. The writer Pauline Klein returned from her journey there with a brand-new piece, the director of the Tashkent Center for Contemporary Art Sara Raza shares her views in a lengthy interview about the new creative scene in Central Asia, Delphine Valloire tells the amazing story of the collector Igor Savitsky and — among other stories about local wrestlers, artists and artisans — the filmmaker Furkat Usmanov describes his childhood in the city, whose mere name evokes a string of readymade dreams made up of caravanserais, Persian bazaars and hazily drawn Silk Roads — fantasies that today must be compared to the reality of a fast-changing city and country.