How can a photographer defame her country?

Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harked back to the days of soviet censorship. The answer, in part: by showing people with sour expressions or bowed  heads, children in ragging clothing, old people begging for change or other images so dreary that, according to a panel of experts convened by the prosecutors, "a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzvekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the middle ages."
 The Uzbek authorities have, in the past, prosecuted artists who openly took on politically charged themes, like the folk singer Dadakhon Khasanov, who wrote a song in the 2005 crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Andijon, in which hundreds are thought to have died. But the case against Ms. Akhmedova breaks ground by singling out an apparently apolitical visual artist for her work.
The charges prompted widespread protest among fellow photographers, who circulated petitions in Ms Akhmedova's defense and have organized exhibits of her own works in Minsk, that capital of Belarus, and the Russians city of Nizhy Novgorod. Daniil Kislov, editor in chief of the Web site Ferghana.ru, which has followed the case avidly as part of its coverage of central Asian events, said he believed that the publicity prompted the authorities to grant Ms. Akhmedova amnesty on Wednesday.