Catherine Michele Adams — Peregrine Photographer - The New East: Past Ruins, To Modernity

Tyre, Lebanon (2018)

Old networks and connections are quietly being restored across the spine of Asia as a reorientation away from Europe is happening from the Levant to the Himalayas. This is happening while most of the world has its gaze fixed elsewhere, rendering a significant swath of the world murky, mysterious, even out of time and a museum playground for intrepid adventurers wanting to experience the grandeur of old empires. But a new, potent modernity is taking ground and shooting up into the sky alongside these monuments, evident in skyscrapers, energy corridors, tourism development, and re-invention of state capitals. Past Ruins, To Modernity plays on these twin aspects of what has been named "The New East." One can arrive in these lands in search of the mythic Silk Road —the caravanserai, the forts, the elaborately decorated mosques and schools—but in the passage to these vestiges of the past, one meets places and communities under rapid transformation and project a future new world order.