Peace Caravan Project NEWS

Marla Mossman Peace Caravan Project Founder/Director  photo for The Epoch Times by Ben Chasteen

This Is New York: Marla Mossman, on Documenting Disappearing Cultures

By Amelia Pang, Epoch Times | August 23, 2014

"NEW YORK—The car came to a halt; there was a roadblock in the mountains of Kabul, Afghanistan. A woman had just been captured. Her translator and driver were killed. The police asked Marla Mossman, a lone traveler with short black curls and bright blue eyes, if she was certain she wanted to go on. The militants would not arrange two kidnappings in half an hour, she thought, so onward she went. 

Mossman, a photographer who documents remnants of culture before it’s pulverized by wars and modernization, has faced harder decisions before......."

For More of Amelia Pang's article CLICK HERE 

International Arts Movement's Nia Kiesowis interviews Founder Marla Mossman.

 Artist Highlights: Peace Caravan Project . August 18, 2014

"Founded in 1996, the Peace Caravan Project is a non profit art project sponsored by the NYFA. Created by photographer, filmmaker, and artist Marla Mossman to explore and document places where cultural exchange continues to thrive just as it did thousands of years ago. Mossman travels along the Silk Road, an ancient series of trade routes that serves as a meeting place for nomads and merchants to carry goods and materials from the Mediterranean to China, crossing Central Asia and the Middle East. The significance of the Silk Road lies not only in the exchange of goods and materials, but in its cultural ties – between peoples of different race, religion, and political background. What piqued Mossman’s interest was her search for her religious and cultural heritage and the threat of the indigenous traditions disappearing with the onset of modernization. We caught up with Mossman to ask a few questions about her time spent with the peoples of the Silk Road.

IAM: What first interested you in starting the Peace Caravan Project?

Marla Mossman: It began with the idea of the relationship to all religion in the 21st century when I was asking the question of why don’t we have peace today. I was engaged in a study program of my own religion of Judaism and found a book of essays about Jewish merchants who had emigrated across this great Silk Road in the 2nd Century B.C. and how they populated this region. The fact that the great religions are still at war today, I wondered, Are these religious tenets, doctrines and these old stories relevant today? After centuries of the great religions, why is there no peace on earth?

IAM: Did you find your expectations met?"

FOR MORE OF THE INTERVIEW click here