OTTUK by Luke Oppenheimer
Hosted by Squadra.art at PICTO New York
^⎵^Join us for an exclusive VIP opening of "OTTUK" photo exhibition by Luke Oppenheimer.
In the winter of 2020 Luke travelled to the Tien Shan mountains of Central Kyrgyzstan for one month to cover a story about Ottuk, a small village of shepherds suffering from severe predation of livestock by a growing population of wolves. Every year wolves eat up to one hundred horses and countless sheep from the village. In the frigid winter months the men of the village venture into the surrounding mountains to hunt the wolves and mitigate their losses. What started out as a month-long trip turned into a five year long project about the people of Ottuk as he came to be accepted as a member of the village and adopted as family. His body of work “Ottuk” is a deep dive into the dreams, hardships, joys and sorrows of the villagers he loves so dearly, their ancient way of life and the landscape that shaped them. Perhaps more than anything, it is an exploration of what it means to live well.
Luke Oppenheimer is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller with a background in agroforestry and sustainable farming from rural Oklahoma. He has lived and worked extensively throughout Latin America, as well as Central and South East Asia. His work focuses primarily on the complex relationship between rural communities, the landscapes they occupy, the wildlife they live next to and how the three shape one another and form each other's destinies, for better or for worse.
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