Tom Schutyser presents a multidisciplinary photography project about one of the six public building types in Islamic Architecture, the caravanserai. For centuries, the caravanserais served as staging posts throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. They provided accommodation to traders, pilgrims, and other travelers along the Silk Road that connected China, India, and Europe. The caravanserais were vital nodes in the first globalized overland network and trading system. Thousands of these caravanserais were built and successfully operated. Time and again, they persisted, surviving empires, caliphates, wars, and natural catastrophes until the demise of the caravan trade.
Having lived, traveled, studied, and worked on every continent, Tom has always been fascinated by local history, culture, and people. During an earlier overland journey to China, Tom learned about the caravanserais of northern Iran. In 2006, he visited Egypt and was surprised to learn there had been more than three hundred caravanserais active in the city of Cairo. Living in the USA, a country deeply scarred by its adventures in the Middle East, Tom was struck at a
whole different level; it became the impetus for this photographic journey.
This project takes documentary photography to its broadest, most cross-disciplinary limits. With a particular focus on the caravanserais of the Levant region of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, it is a narrative that encompasses aspects of Middle Eastern history, culture, art, and architecture. It is, at the same time, documentary photography, textual research, travel journal, multicultural
dialogue, and meditation on current affairs. In the tumultuous state of relations between the Western and Muslim worlds today, caravanserais are evidence of ancient international exchange, communication, and trade. The monumental changes taking place today in the
Middle East—the religious and sectarian confrontations, the Arab Spring movements, a growing youth population, and strained socio-economic conditions—represent enormous challenges for the region. From the haze of history to documentary photography and travelogue to reaching out to experts on the Middle East—from Traces to Places to Dialogue—the caravanserais provide inspiration to find new multicultural platforms for the future. Visual representation and metaphorical images have always been powerful tools for stimulating new ideas and investigating different solutions. With a message of multicultural exchange and communication, of “West meets Middle East,” the caravanserais suggest cultural diplomacy at its finest. As confrontations, wars, and conflicts continue to take their toll, dialogue threads are in dire need of exploration. The caravanserais, in operation for many centuries, are a metaphor for long-lasting multicultural dialogue. I very strongly feel that their story deserves to be told.
About Tom Schutyser:
A European national born in Belgium, Tom Schutyser has lived, traveled, studied, and worked in Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa. While his professional career in international business has led him through various disciplines and expertise, he has been a traveler, researcher, nomad, restless mind, critical thinker, humanist, and multiculturalism. He, his wife Drieke, and their two kids live in the USA. A documentary photographer and writer with a profound interest in architecture, culture, and history, Schutyser became intrigued by the caravanserais and fascinated by the connections between these centuries-old structures and current international affairs in the Middle East, the West, and the East. His first series of photos from northern Iran resulted in an art collaboration with Gilles Neuray, a series of gallery exhibitions in Portland, USA, and his first solo exhibition in Paris, France, in collaboration with l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture (ENSA) of Paris-Val de Seine. In 2009, another four-month road trip through Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan led to a second visual documentary on the caravanserais. The photographic series “Caravanserais in the Levant” has been exhibited in Lebanon at Silk Factory in Beiteddine and at Art Lounge in Beirut, and a group photography exhibition at Springbox in Portland, USA. The book “Caravanserai, Traces, Places, Dialogue in the Middle East” was published with 5 Continents, Milan, with the support of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Learn more about Tom Schutyser's work.