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Ricky Qi 祁奇

@supplythelight

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In search of old stories that point to how we can live today. Films and images. Explorer @natgeo

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by @supplythelight

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2 months ago

SOUND ON 🔊 Six weeks in Central Asia this year, capped off with covering the World Nomad Games in Kazakhstan. Looking forward to sharing my thoughts on this epic sporting event with a documentary film I’ll be putting together. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these clips… I’ll wager it’s the next best thing to being there. @worldnomadgames2024 @presidential_orchestra_kz @abyroy.official #worldnomadgames #worldnomadgames2024 #kazakh #kazakhstan #Казахста́н #traditions #kokpar #kusbegilik #eaglehunting #archery #nomadlife taken in Astana, Kazakhstan by @supplythelight

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2 years ago

I first set foot on the pathways of the Silk Roads in 2010, journeying in Xinjiang to the historic trade stops of Urumqi and Kashgar. I then traveled along the Karakoram Highway, the highest highway in the world, to Tashkurgan, a mountain pass fortress bordering China and Pakistan. It was the trip that launched a thousand ships in my mind, and ignited my interest in photographing ways of life undergoing transition. I dreamed about those places for years after. They haunted me with their rugged, spare, lonely, beauty. Few places have left such an impression on me.

Three months ago, I took a solo journey across 600 miles of the Gansu Corridor, the narrow stretch of land wedged between the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan Plateau that connected the eastern terminus of the Silk Roads, the ancient Chinese capital of Chang’an (now Xi’an), to the Western regions. I fell ill with swine flu in Dunhuang, which later turned into pneumonia. I remember lying in my hotel room looking out my window at the sand dunes in a state of delirium, and the only thing I could think about was how these ancient people and animals blazed these trade routes with their literal sweat and blood. Many traveled along it, many never returned. How many died far from home, gazing at a foreign sky, or at low-slung ceilings of uneven sticks and mud, in a similar state of fevered delirium?

Now, I find myself further west than I’ve ever gone before, continuing this strange multi-year journey, this obsession of needing to piece together a bigger picture than the one I perceive, and traveling along roads both old and new. The Silk Roads is more than just historical trade routes. It’s a way of seeing the world… A path that I haphazardly began nearly 15 years ago, but one that I don’t want to get off anytime soon.

Image: Samarkand, Uzbekistan. A woman walks by the monumental iwan of the Sher-Dor Madrasa in the historic Registan Square. taken in Samarkand by @supplythelight

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2 years ago

Faces of the World Nomad Games. A huge thank-you to @kyrgyzconcept_travel for making the logistics of this all possible. Shout out to @tentekspirit for tirelessly riding (literally 🐎) alongside and paving the path for our 🫛team. Дүйнөлүк көчмөндөр оюндарынын катышуучулары. Камерамдын жөндөөлөрү эсимде жок, бирок биз чогуу өткөргөн ошол көз ирмемдер эсимде. @shorokgz @salbuurun_kyrgyzstan @kiyizduino @world_nomad_games taken in Kyrgyzstan by @supplythelight

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24 days ago

SWIPE FOR VIDEO. Tugolbay, a Kyrgyz berkutchi and the newly crowned champion of eagle hunting at this year’s World Nomad Games. I personally think the secret to his success was plain patience and an intrinsic understanding of his golden eagle’s behaviors and needs… Intangibles that decide whether you attempt to control your bird— or work with her. I’m glad he won. Most of his competitors were a half to a third of his age and sometimes seemed unable to read their birds or to even get them to leave their perch. When a large bird of prey is on your arm, it quickly becomes obvious who has only paid the price of admission, and who has truly spent the time and energy to master the art. And to this end, Tugolbay was heads and shoulders above everyone else… taken in Kyrgyzstan by @supplythelight

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a month ago

Shakaan in the khan-yurt, Kyrchyn Valley. @kiyizduino taken in Issyl-Kul lake, Kyrgyzstan by @supplythelight

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a month ago

“I remember the bread baked by my mother.” Апам жапкан нанди эстейм. Negizbek told me this as he broke the freshly baked bread made by his wife. It steamed in the cold morning light as he handed it to me. I tried to hold it, but it burned my hand. Visiting with traditional chabans— Kyrgyz shepherds choosing to live a semi-nomadic lifestyle in the 21st century… Is like drinking from a pure mountain spring. It is a source. As the endless chatter over invisible signals tries to convince us to be this way or that, to instill fear in us or provoke us to anger or despair… Here in a secluded high valley in Kyrgyzstan, I begin to recall that which is most important... I begin to remember the bread baked by my mother. taken in Kyrgyzstan by @supplythelight

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a month ago

"I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls." -Ursula Le Guin by @supplythelight

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7 months ago

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8 months ago

Two winters ago, in the month leading up to my first assignment in Antarctica, I was busying myself with the remodel of one of my bathrooms. If you’ve ever had to DIY anything in your home, I’m sure you can relate to what I’m about to say. Measuring, demo’ing, making mistakes, repeated trips to Home Depot, and finding a sweet spot between the tile you like, and the one you can actually afford… All this was occupying my headspace even as I was crossing the Drake. Of course I don’t enjoy admitting that my mind wasn’t entirely present on what I was about to experience, but that’s just how it is, isn’t it? The unknown unknowns of life that can’t be measured nor predicted…

But I’ll always remember the first time I set my eyes on the frozen continent. We were sailing south through Marguerite Bay, past large tabular icebergs that had run around on the seafloor. The sight of those bergs, any one of them many times the size of my humble home, stirred something within me. The realization that often the things that stress me out, the banal minutiae of everyday life— like selecting tile in a bathroom— doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. In that moment I experienced what the Japanese call: “mono no aware” or the fleetingness of all things. Not seeing my life as the center of existence was liberating. I’ll never forget that sight, and that feeling.

In October of this year, I boarded the National Geographic Explorer and headed back to the Southern Ocean. We sailed past A23A, the largest iceberg in the world. When it broke off the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in 1986, its surface area was 3,500 square kilometers… It is unfathomably large. It took us nearly three hours to sail past it, and for some indeterminate time after, it lingered on the horizon like a lost coastline. This photo was shot as we passed it.

If you’ve made it this far into my words, my hope is that today, whatever you’re going through, wherever your headspace is, take this moment to remember that the small stuff will always be there for us to worry and fret about, right alongside the unfathomably large things. Only it’s up to us to adjust our aperture accordingly. #Antarctica #A23A taken in Southern Ocean by @supplythelight

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9 months ago

Incredibly thankful for this year and the experiences I’ve had the privilege to participate in, but they would indeed mean little if not shared in the company of family and friends. You all have been my peak experience. With gratitude🫶 by @supplythelight

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10 months ago

South Georgia. You may be forgiven if the name conjured images of the Caucuses or even the deep south of the United States. But it is not in Europe, nor is it in North America. It’s a lonely island located in the Southern Ocean, “only” 800 miles from the monochrome world of Antarctica. Though it is a wind and rain-battered rock in the middle of one of the most unforgiving oceans on our planet, it is a place to which life clings with a ferocity and force seldom seen in this concentration anywhere else. This island is teeming with animals small and large, but to me the symbolic representation of this place is the king penguin. Hundreds of thousands of them call South Georgia home, and their ancestors have called this place home since before the pharaohs of Egypt built their great tombs. Here they truly live up to their royal namesake, living— and dying, amidst a backdrop of dramatic contrasts: a realm of ice and cliff, tussock and beach. South Georgia is a tiny spit of inconsequential land by any comparison to our continental sensibilities, but this place is a hidden jewel, a magnificent wild place that by virtue of difficulty of travel, has and hopefully will remain one of the last kingdoms that we humans remain foreigners in. @natgeo @lindbladexp taken in South Georgia Island by @supplythelight

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a year ago