ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Though a very common day gesture in Tajikistan, the sincerity and simple beauty of this young woman, resting her hand on her heart signifying respectful greeting, caught my attention. It was on the occasion of Nowruz, the Tajik New Year celebrations in the capital Dushanbe in March 2023. Women and girls were wearing their festive embroidered traditional attire and selling handcraft and food products at stalls at a market. The gesture, combined with her open gaze into the camera, were convincingly legit, underlined by the usual modesty expected from women in this region. After years of living and working in Tajikistan, I came to appreciate this gesture as a warm, personal and very peaceful opening of every bilateral encounter.

AUTHOR
Dr. Alamir is a political scientist by education and has been working in security policy and international development contexts for more than twenty years. In the wake of numerous business and private travels to Europe, Asia and Africa, she developed a keen interest in photojournalism, people and landscape photography. Around 2010, she assumed a more ambitious approach to photography and has been working to improve by professional standards ever since. Since 2017, she has won several honorable mentions in international photo competitions, among others several honorable mentions of the International Monoawards and the 1st prize (Discovery of the Year) 2019 of the Tokyo International Foto Awards.

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