More thoughts about the Karaite

Searching the internet for Karaite-related information today I came across the BBC Who Do You Think You Are site. For those who aren’t familiar with it it’s a documentary series that’s hitched a ride on the back of the current obsession with tracing family history that follows celebrities as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of their ancestral past. I’ve seen a few of them, but not the one that came up in my search, namely the programme that focused on the English actor David Suchet. The two things I find of particular note about the series are the importance of family history as a way of telling historical stories in a personal way and the fact that we don’t really know much about our ancestors, and are quite often astonished when we start to look into them. Suchet knew his family history less than a hundred years back, namely that of his grandfather who came to the UK from South Africa. He knew that he had Eastern European Jewish roots, but no more than that. Using a Russianised version of his family name he managed to work his way back to of all places Lithuania, or rather modern-day Lithuania that at the time he was interested in knowing more about was, after exhaustive research both part of tsarist Russia and the Prussian Empire. Dipping into old records he soon discovered that far from being descended from Eastern European Jewry he was in fact the descendent of Turks (thus the connection with the Karaite, who incidentally weren’t mentioned in the programme but who came up in the comments left on the series website by its readers). Anyhow, the thing that really struck me in relation to the project I’m embarking on with the Karaite is that it’s particularly important to create this series of portraits for the benefit of future generations. Photographic evidence on its own is powerful enough (eg. the slow cultural changes in Karaite clothing from their traditional costumes in the late 19th century through to the now uniform (no pun intended) adoption of Western clothing. With the addition of some writing, I firmly believe the project will make a significant addition to the history of the Karaite, not least because from all the research I’ve do far uncovered, nobody has made any serious or otherwise photographic record of the Karaite community. Ethnically, the Lithuanian Karaite are utterly unique, despite sharing some common heritage with their neighbours over the border in Poland. This is most evident in their language, which contains many instances of Lithuanian alongside the Polish and Russian influences as seen in the language of the Polish Karaite (of which I should point out there are less than the population of the Lithuanian Karaite). The last head count of the Lithuanian Karaite population took place in 1997, of which it was found that there were 252 left in the country, 60 or so of them in Trakai, the spiritual home of the Turkic offshoot of the world Karaite movement. Alongside the language, I’m particularly interested in recording somehow their religious practices (the Karaite are unusual in that they remove their shoes before entering a kenesa, or Karaite synagogue), which must surely betray their Turkic (Islamic?) origins. Their folk art also looks entirely Islamic, and their food is also very non-Jewish. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, most remaining Lithuanian Karaite are busy integrating within modern Lithuanian society, with only a handful attempting to hang on to their original culture. This was brought home to me when I made my test picture of Artūras, who when asked if he was going to marry a Karaite woman said it depended entirely on his heart. Following ones heart may be the best way to live life, but under certain circumstances it can mean whether an entire ethnic group survives or is wiped off the face of the planet. Unfortunately, yesterday I couldn’t attend the session with John, and this weekend I’m busy with other things, so there’s not much to report on the Karaite project beyond my usual trains of thought. I have however emailed representatives of the Karaite community (on the recommendation of Artūras) but don’t hold out much hope for a response. As in most things, it’s the personal touch that’s going to move things along. More research has uncovered the fact that nobody really knows who the Lithuanian Karaite are. There’s no doubt that they came from the Crimea at the end of the 14th century, but how this ethnically Turkic group ended up converting to Karaite Judaism, and exactly who they were when they did, remains a total mystery. Just how I’m going to go about this project visually also remains at least in part a mystery. I decided before I made my first trip to Trakai last weekend that I was going to do the project in black and white, but beyond that I don’t have much idea about style. Most important is a visual record accompanied by an underlying documentary/journalistic approach to the work. I’ve been looking at portraits today, and although I find the more interesting and dramatic examples visually exciting, I do wonder if sometimes this style of over-romanticising photography takes more away from the very essence of the subject than it adds. I suppose only time can tell where all of this is going to lead me.