Showcase: Long Soviet Shadows – Lens

Jenish’s home in Kyrgyzstan is underground, near pipes that deliver hot water to the city overhead. The photographer William Daniels portrayed him tossing back a glass of vodka, as starkly lit as a figure by Caravaggio. The realities faced by a day laborer could not be plainer than in this picture (Slide 5). And its grim atmosphere sets the mood for Mr. Daniels’s depiction of contemporary Kyrgyzstan, a destitute former Soviet republic in central Asia.