Silk Route Interiors

October 25, 2010

Also known as: Getting into homes to photograph interiors in foreign countries without knowing the people or their languages.

You might ask what possessed a sophisticated Jewish New Yorker of a certain age, to travel down the coast of Turkey, Syria, and Jordan using public transportation, stopping off in countless cities, meandering through the streets of ancient villages to photograph interiors of Nomad, Gypsy homes, and finally into Bedouin tents in the desert. Or how presumptuous it was to think I could actually get in to these homes and tents whose owners I didn’t know or had no connection with. Or, if I ever for a moment entertained the idea that I would travel all that distance and not accomplish what I set out to do. It doesn’t hurt to be curious, creative “never quit, never give in” New Yorker.

copyright Lynn Gilbert 2010

My guide and I had to submit to brutal waves of heat that flowed over our bodies traveling through the Sahara, but going in to a tent was close as close to Nirvana as you can get.

What was it about interiors, that has always touched my soul. Probably it was the imprint of my mother’s own fascination with design. More than fifty years ago she “turned me on” to a life long passion when MOMA opened the most magnificent homes to its members, and ever since I was old enough to travel on my own, I’ve been making pilgrimages to see homes all over the world.

The great homes and not so great homes of Great Britain were my training ground where I traveled just for that purpose for at least 30 years. Throughout the rest of the years there were places like India, China, Bali, Sweden, Peru, Russia, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, amongst a few, not leaving out our own US, going up and down the Eastern Coast, mostly on my own. And then finding and testing various architectural travel groups until I found the perfect fit, only joining groups because there were places I couldn’t get in to on my own.

It is only through this kind of visual feasting year in and year out and over more than half a century that the impact of “seeing” has greater meaning.

This last journey was magical. Who would ever guess that homes by our standards—which have no possessions—had such great beauty and an impeccable sense of style and design, not good but great. Using color, pattern, texture, proportion and a disciplined sense of scale, rich or poor, design is in their bones. 

copyright Lynn Gilbert 2010

Nomads—the word conjures up wanderers—were the aristocrats of this group. Some homes were like those of feudal lords, but even the poor ones in little villages had a flawless sense of style.
 
Bedouins, who had “nothing” and used almost “nothing,” managed to create a sense of beauty and repose that would calm even the most frayed nerves.
 
And the gypsies—well, gypsies are gypsies. There is a wildness and freedom that is inherent in their lives …and their style. They also prided themselves on their homes, even though they didn’t possess the discipline.
 
One big strong gypsy woman grabbed me by the wrist and started skipping with me through the village, with a gaggle of 50 gypsies tagging behind, my guide cracking up, and the taxi driver shouting in Syrian, “We have to go!” But my new gypsy friend, who had me powerfully in her grip, wasn’t having any of that,….not until I photographed her home also. I could feel her burst with pride when I walked through the door. And she had every reason to: for a gypsy it was really out of the ordinary, with embroidered doilies on her book shelves.
 
What could be more exhilarating than the heart thumping surprises going through a door, passing through the flap of a tent, and confronting the kind of consistency of design that makes your jaw drop?

What a “trip!” in every sense of the word. Will I do this again? You bet.  I have a list of places to go. I just hope the old bones hold out.
 
Should you want to get a tiny smattering of what I saw, check out my website

Lynn Gilbert
10/18/10

Lynn Gilbert is a photographer from New York. Occasionally she writes an article for Parade.