This is an unpublished project premiered today on C41 Magazine.
After a 27 year career in the City, Charles decided to enrol at Central Saint Martins to study MA Contemporary Photography, Practises and Philosophies in 2018.
Charles works with sculpture, printing and photography and he is particularly interested in the decline in cultural diversity and man’s impact on his environment which he has documented during his extensive travels.
About ‘Tien Shan Mountains’ – words by Charles Binns:
In the summer of 2017 I decided to embark on one last adventure cycling through the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan on a mountain bike, alone and unsupported along a 1,000 km route that would take me, mainly off road, across some of the remoter valleys and high passes of this Central Asian Mountain range.
Tien Shan means Celestial Mountains and the range runs from the western edge of China, through Kyrgyzstan to the Kazakh plains. The range is famous for its jagged mountain peaks, its lush green valleys populated by nomadic herdsmen who move their horses and sheep up to the high pastures in summer time. The Kyrgyz herders spend the summers in round yurts, tending their animals and making kumis, fermented mare’s milk whose taste defies description.
I travelled light, carrying only the bare essentials and used a simple plastic holga to record my journey. As exhilaration merged with a state of exhaustion, I became less aware of the sublime beauty of my surroundings and more focussed on simple details of the landscape. A telegraph pole or eroded mausoleum would hold me in their spell and these are the images I started to capture.
