El Alma Del Mundo
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In October 2023, I was earning just enough to survive and also have a decent amount of free time. It was a privilege, especially for an emigrant. But I took this chance and spent almost 3 months hitchhiking in western Georgia. I visited all sorts of towns and villages in Mingrelia, Imereti, and Guria. I even had a chance to go to Mestia.
I enjoyed the hospitality of dozens of Georgians living in the terrain desecrated by capitalism. I never took pictures during that time. I ended up photographing the more distant and deserted places. Places left behind either because it was not the season to exploit them or because they were unexploitable. Or because they were exploited to the last drop of the holy land which only few parts of Georgia remain to this day. I photographed hungry dogs in the off-season beach resorts; cows and horses that get drained until they drop to the ground for the last time. Abandoned buildings and pieces of land that won't bring any harvest for the next hundreds of years.
Some of the stories you'll read are true to the last word. Others are my visions and nightmares. They're exactly the scenes that might as well be among my photographs. But not yet. For now, they're just visions. In the exposition, I tried to make sure that the stories made from the notes from my travels are as photographic as the photographs themselves. Unless I failed to do that, you should be seeing one wholesome series of images before you. And I can only hope that they will matter to the viewer as much as they do to me and to the land photographed.
Me, reading the texts. These notebooks would later be pinned down onto black cardboard the same size as the photographs. The pictures of the final exposition will be here when the work arrives at Roots Gallery in Pisa, Italy.
The series is now being hosted by déréal digital magazine:
https://www.derealdigital.com/burnt-lavender
https://www.instagram.com/derealdigital/