How does a German village get to Kyrgyzstan?

Before the autumn of 1988, Irina Unruh, who was nine years old, left Kyrgyzstan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, with her family. Two decades later, she returned to Telman, her home village, which lies in the valley of the Chui River and is called Grünfeld by the older residents. Like its surrounding ones, the village was founded in the 1920s by refugee German Mennonites.

In her publication Where The Poplars Grow, Irina Unruh delves into her family history and sensitively places her past within a historical context. Her documentary photographs tell stories of loss, origins, and the search for identity. Through the history of Russian Germans, Unruh tells her personal story of escape, displacement, and home. -Publisher