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In her photo essay, Sweet Salt of Emptiness, Aleksandra Bardas captures the desertification of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. In Soviet times, Uzbekistan grew large quantities of cotton using strong pesticides and water from rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea to irrigate the fields. With less and less water reaching the sea, temperatures in the surrounding region rose drastically, further exacerbating the Aral Sea’s depleted water levels and the evaporation of drinking water.

At the same time, the region’s local fisheries were decimated as catches reduced from 40,000 tons in the 1960s to only 2 tons in the mid-80s. Local fisheries simply ceased to exist at the expense of some 60,000 lost jobs. People were forced to leave their homes and look for new residences where they could find a job and feed their families.

Today not a single species of fish remains in the sea, only Artemy plankton. This story is not only about disappearance of the Aral Sea, but also about people whose lives, continuously depleted, are tested every day.


Aleksandra Bardas (1988), born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, lives in Germany working in journalistic and documentary photography. She is currently a master’s student in photography at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where she also completed a BA in Photography.