Women in Azerbaijan live on the verge of east and west, adolescence and adulthood, submission and independence. Fear and tradition are driving forces in Azerbaijani life both private and public. An influx of new money from the second oil boom has brought selective prosperity. Azerbaijan has a tremendous wealth gap and lack of a middle class. Women are torn between these competing forces and finding their own way.
I began living in Azerbaijan full time in September 2011. In Azerbaijan, in certain cases women are independent and strong, intellectually and financially ahead of the men in their lives. On average, though, a stasis exists on many levels – social, political, economic and cultural. Living in Azerbaijan has allowed me access to the lives of women in different corners of the country. This project initially grew out of a curiosity and a desire to challenge assumptions many have in the West about what a modern Muslim society might look like, particularly one that borders both Russia and the North Caucuses and Iran. I hoped to bring people to contact with an important but largely ignored culture of great strategic importance to the West due to the one-million barrel a day Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the 60 percent of goods and materiel for the conflict in Afghanistan transiting through Azerbaijan, and the border shared with Iran and an estimated 30 million ethnic Azeris living in Iran. Azerbaijan is technically at war with Armenia as it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union, although verges closer to peace and selective prosperity these days. Increasingly, I hope the viewer walks away with an understanding and appreciation of the limits of tradition. The restrictions of society are not impossible to overcome, but the process of transformation and ultimately liberation is slower in societies with authoritarian traditions and much of its territory occupied by a foreign nation. Economic growth, so often touted as the solution to a society’s ails, takes care of the material concerns of a percentage of a population. Ultimately, though, tradition and wealth bring both malaise and comfort.