Living KZ market: inside Almaty's Green Bazaar
Almaty's Green Bazaar at golden hour: sun through the skylights onto dried fruit, spices and the meat hall, and a lamb laid out like a still life.
Next to the black-and-white concrete of my Almaty buildings, the Green Bazaar is all colour. It is the city's big covered market, and we went at golden hour, when the sun comes down through the skylights and falls on the stands in beams, leaving the rest of the hall in the dark.
A maze on several levels
The bazaar is a maze. At its heart is the main hall, with windows in the ceiling and shops all along the inner balcony that runs around it. Then comes a huge section of object and clothing shops, and the fresh market is at the bottom. You don't really visit it, you get lost in it, floor after floor.
The hall from above
Most of these pictures were taken from the upper floor, looking down. From there the bazaar reads like a map: rows of meat stalls in red and white, fruit and spice stands in every colour, and the people moving between them. The light does the editing. Where the beam lands, a stand glows; everything around it falls into shadow.
Dried fruit and spices
The dried fruit, nuts and spices are piled in neat squares, a grid of colours with the sellers serving behind it. We bought dried fruit and spices, but prices were too high for us and there were a lot of scams.
As for the camera, most sellers didn't care. A few curious eyes looked back at it, and that was all.
Pictorial death
In the meat hall, from above, I found a lamb, skinned and laid perfectly in the middle of the stand, with the butchers cutting meat on the red stalls around it. Seen from the top it became a painting: a lifelike, pictorial animal, but composed like a nature morte, a still life. That is where the title comes from.
Photographer's notes
The whole album was shot with the 25mm on the X-T5 at ISO 400. The wide views of the hall are at f/1.7, between 1/800s and 1/2000s. The close, top-down frames of the spice stand and the butchers are at f/6.4 and f/7.1, at 1/50s and 1/60s.
AlbumLiving KZ market
Practical tips
- Go at golden hour, when the sun comes through the skylights.
- Go up to the upper floor for the view over the halls.
- Watch the prices: they can be high, and scams are common.
