"Life is Good" by Russian photographer Natalia Emshanova

"Oildale" by Felix Adamo, photojournalist for The Bakersfield Californian

Local photographer Greg Iger talks with Open World office manager Alison Case of Washington, D.C., at the opening reception of "Open World Smiles" at the County Administrative Services Building on Tuesday, Dec. 15. Photo by Jennifer Baldwin

By Jennifer Baldwin

A new photography exhibit that opened Tuesday in Bakersfield accomplished exactly what its organizers hoped it would: It bridged the divide between two far-away communities through the language of smiling.

Titled “Open World Smiles,” the exhibit features images shot by photographers in Kern County and Russia. All of the photos incorporate smiling in some way, either literally or inherently. For example, there’s a toothy grin by an older gentleman, and a joyful silhouette of several women jumping along a shoreline.

Other than a few pictures with clues such as traditional clothing or flags, it’s hard to tell which were shot in Russia and which were shot here in Kern County – until you peer closer at the photographers’ names.

That was the whole point of the process, said local photographer Greg Iger, who together with Russian photographer Dina Baykova conceived of the joint photo experiment two years ago when Baykova stayed with the Igers. She was here with a group of Russian journalists as part of a delegation to Bakersfield through an organization called Open World.

“She thought it was interesting that people, generally, in Russia thought that Americans were sad and hardworking and never got out to have fun,” Iger said. “I told her that Americans always thought Russians were cold, reserved, downtrodden people.”

But the Igers and their guest quickly learned that their counterparts were fun-loving, happy people. And even though their conversations had to be filtered through an interpreter, there was one common language they shared: smiling.

“So we decided to make an exchange of smiles pictures,” Iger said.

As visitors to the exhibit’s opening reception studied the photographs, many voiced that the photos could have been taken anywhere. Iger’s juxtapositions of several prints remarkably showed the similarities between two far-away lands.

He hung a Russian photo of a man with a table full of mushrooms next to a local photo of a woman holding up carrots. There are two photos of young women with untamed, curly hair – one Russian, one from Kern.

The most attention-getting pair of photos each depicts a middle-aged woman laughing, hair pulled back and sunglasses on her head. One is called “Life is Good” by Natalia Emshanova, and the other is “Oildale” by Felix Adamo, a photojournalist for The Bakersfield Californian. In the Russian photo, a smiling man is tugging at the laughing woman’s arm.

“It just amazes me how two people worlds away look so alike,” said Hilde Elges as she admired the photos. “The way that Greg put them together, it looks like the man is saying, ‘Meet your twin.’”

Elges, along with Iger, is a member of the local organization Friendship Force of Kern, which provides homes for international visitors such as the Russian delegates from Open World. This week a new group of Russians is in town to learn about the workings of American local government. They viewed the photo exhibit before heading into the county Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday morning.

“It’s a marvelous idea to exchange smiles. It’s something universal,” said Elena Potapova, an Open World facilitator from Moscow. “You don’t need words. All you need is a smile to communicate.”

The exhibit will remain on display through the end of December at the County Administrative Services Building, 1115 Truxtun Ave. during normal business hours. For more information about the exhibit, contact Greg Iger at 327-2768 or greg@igerstudio.com.

To learn more about Open World, go to www.openworld.gov. For details on Friendship Force of Kern County, visit www.ffkern.org.