PHOTOGRAPHY: Project 'I had left my home early in the morning'. Georgia - Armenia, 2015 - 2019. By Lilit Matevosyan

This project is documentary research of the past, realized through the prism of personal history. Based on memories from my childhood, I create an autobiographical visual journey to places that used to be my home.
The Immigration topic allowed me to go beyond my personal story — it is not only about the history of a particular family, but about entire generations of people living in the Caucasus after the collapse of the Soviet Union who was forced to flee their to seek a better life.

My goal is to try to reconnect, to find lost roots, to learn more about the present in the past. (Lilit Matevosyan)

Slideshow was produced in the frame of Multimedia Lab Production Grant Program for South Caucasus Female Photographers May-October 2019 mentored by Justyna Mielnikiewicz / MAPS. Multimedia Lab aims to support the professional strengthening of emerging women photographers of South Caucasus region that cover social issues in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and use the medium of photography as the powerful tool of storytelling. The project is financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Copyright: Lilith Matevosyan

Music: Karina Kazaryan
soundcloud.com/karinakazaryan

More: Post-Soviet South Caucasus migration explored in Tbilisi display of photographer Lilith Matevosyan [agenda_ge]
Photographic works reflecting the plight of generations forced into migration throughout the South Caucasus following the dissolution of the Soviet Union will go on display at Tbilisi's Untitled Gallery later this week, celebrating the work of photographer Lilith Matevosyan.

Presenting an "autobiographical visual journey" throughout locations she called her home throughout the years, Matevosyan will exhibit photos that use personal history as a prism on the generational transformation created by the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s.

"[I]t is not only about the history of a particular family, but about entire generations of people living in the Caucasus after the collapse of the Soviet Union who was forced to flee their to seek a better life" - Lilith Matevosyan

The Sochi-based photographer said her goal with the work was to "reconnect, find the lost roots and learn about the present while searching for the clues in the past".

The selection of works is titled I had left my home early in the morning, with the photographs produced as part of the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum's 2019 project for supporting women photographers of the region. Led by Justyna Mielnikiewicz, a Tbilisi-based, award-winning Polish photographer, the grant for women was held as part of the multi-year Photography Hub for Education and Innovation, a project of the TPMM supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation via the Embassy of Switzerland in Georgia.

In the TPMM grant Mielnikiewicz mentored Matevosyan [instagram], who told her social media followers in November she was "really happy" to have her long-term project published by the museum. Works produced as a result of the grant - by Matevosyan and six other women photographers from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - were also exhibited at the museum earlier this month to shed the light on social issues in their respective countries.

PHOTOGRAPHY: TBILISI PHOTO FESTIVAL 2018 CLOSING AT STAMBA HOTEL on September 20th!

Broken Sea

by Russian Georgia female photographers duo Nata Sopromadze & Irina Sadchikova

© Broken Sea by Nata Sopromadze & Irina Sadchikova 

Exhibition - installation

Opening at 18.30, Stamba Hotel.

+++

Salty Taste of The Black Sea 
                   



© Gueorgui Pinkhassov / Magnum Photos. Sokhumi, Abkhazia, Georgia 2009 

by Eric Baudlaire, Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum Photos, Family albums, Maria Gruzdeva, Yuri Kozyrev/NOOR, Justyna Mielnikiewicz/MAPS, Gueorgui Pinkhassov/Magnum Photos, Anna Dziapshipa, Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos, Anonymous Polish tourists’ photo archives, documentary movies from 70s, found footage.

Screening with live music accompaniment by Ben Wheeler

at 20.30 Stamba Hotel Amphitheatre.


www.tbilisiphotofestival.com
www.instagram.com/tbilisi_photo_Festival
www.facebook.com/tbilisiphotofestival
 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Interview with in Georgia-based freelance photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz (@lensculture)

(lensculture.com) Keep Working, No Matter What: Learning about Life Through Visual Storytelling

For this photographer, 15 years of doggedly pursuing personal projects resulted in one of photography’s most esteemed awards. Discover the tenacity it takes to produce meaningful work.

For 15 years, Polish-born, Georgia-based freelance photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz has been committed to discovering stories and sharing them with others using her camera. Dedicated and passionate (she would even say stubborn), Mielnikiewicz has stuck through the inevitable highs and lows of independent work to produce personal projects she is truly proud of. Her commitment to narrative photography was recognized in 2016 when she was awarded the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Fund grant in humanistic photography, which came with $30,000 to support new work.

Next month, she will be hosting a workshop in Georgia in collaboration with Tbilisi Photo Festival (more info below). In advance of her workshop, LensCulture managing editor Alexander Strecker exchanged emails with Mielnikiewicz to learn more about her dogged pursuit of visual storytelling that has taken her far from her roots in Poland— Full Interview here >>>




more links
www.justmiel.com
www.twitter.com/justmiel
www.instagram.com/justmiel
www.facebook.com/justyna.mielnikiewicz
www.facebook.com/justyna.mielnikiewicz_2

culture.pl/en/artist/justyna mielnikiewicz
www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/author/justyna mielnikiewicz
www.americanphotomag.com/photographer justyna mielnikiewicz



Justyna Mielnikiewicz discusses her journey from a village in Poland to Tbilisi, and her unique path to becoming a successful international photographer.

TBILISI PHOTO FESTIVAL: Original Masterclass with Yuri Kozyrev / Noor Images & Justyna Mielnikiewicz - in villages Shenako, Tusheti, Georgia

For its 8th edition, Tbilisi Photo Festival partners with AtlasGlobal air company to hold in July its Original Masterclass workshops with Yuri Kozyrev/Noor and Justyna Mielnikiewicz - two internationally-acclaimed photographers! Both of them share keen ability to communicate the profound knowledge of photography and are intimately familiar with Georgia.

© Justyna Mielnikiewicz. Women with a Monkey at a beauty trade show. Tbilisi, 2001.

The masterclasses will be held in the remote village of Shenako, 2000 meters high in the Greater Caucasus mountain range. This awe-inspiring hamlet of shepherds and horsemen was chosen for its breathtaking landscape and its photographic legacy in the name of Shalva Alkhanaidze, whose brilliant mid-20th century images of Tushetian life reveal a world of raw passion and somber frankness.

The Masterclass aims both to help photographers develop a personal photographic language and to discover Georgia by exploring one of its most enchanting regions.

In the frame of partnership with Atlasglobal the participants flying from European cities will get - 30% disscount on air tickets!

-10% discount on masterclass price for participants that register before May 15th!

To register, please check the details here and send an email to: masterclass@tbilisiphotofestival.com

tbilisiphotofestival.com/en/masterclass-post/visual-storytelling-/Yuri Kozyrev/Noor
tbilisiphotofestival.com/en/masterclass-post/visual-storytelling-/Justyna Mielnikiewicz


More information ask Elina Valaite:

Masterclass coordinator (she speaks English, Russian and Georgian).

email: masterclass@tbilisiphotofestival.com



We hope to host you in Shenako!

Tbilisi Photo Festival 2017
Opening Week September 14 - 19
Tbilisi Night of Photography on September 16

Elina Valaite
Assistant of Artistic Director

www.tbilisiphotofestival.com
www.facebook.com/tbilisiphotofestival

GEORGIA: Tinkering with the Country’s Dance DNA. By Monica Ellena and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

VIDEO >>>

(eurasianet.org) Three long-limbed, statuesque women swirl across the stage in red dresses. Their drooping sleeves slash the air. Their bleached, buzz-cut heads glow in the dim light.

Always seeking a balance between tradition and innovation, the tiny South Caucasus country of Georgia is experimenting again -- this time by seeking to meld modern dance with folk dance.

Unlike in the West, dance in Georgia is not the domain of the artistic few. Intricate, gravity-defying folk dances are a national obsession, a genre believed to show the country at its best.

The focal point of this obsession is the state-funded Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili, a 70-year-old company now pushing the boundaries of Georgia’s national dance identity with a privately financed modern-dance project. Called the Ramishvilebi, in honor of the Georgian National Ballet’s legendary co-founder, Nino Ramishvili, the group gives women more dynamic roles, uses a mix of jazz, electronic and Georgian traditional music, and creates more room for improvisation.

It is contemporary – female dancers initially dance in flesh-colored leotards that make them appear topless – but “[i]ts accent and soul is [sic] very Georgian,” underlined Nino Sukhishvili, the company’s 50-year-old general director, who oversees the modern-dance project’s costumes and sets.

The Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili’s core choreography reflects the desire of Ramishvili and her husband, fellow ballet dancer Ilia Sukhishvili, to blend dance traditions from Georgia’s regions with classical ballet.

Men perform dizzying jumps and high-speed spins to a raging drumbeat or dance on their toes – the “repertory of twists, twirls and tumbles could put any modern break-dancer to the test,” The New York Times wrote in 1988, when the company first toured the US.

Women’s roles are far more demure, with much graceful gliding across the stage, but have evolved in recent years to include a military dance.

Nino Sukhishvili and her 42-year-old brother, the ensemble’s chief choreographer and artistic director, Iliko Sukhishvili (grandchildren of the ensemble’s co-founders) maintain that they want the troupe to recognize the past while keeping in step with the times.

The modern-dance performance’s symbolic trio of dancers in red evolves from a folk dance for three women (Samaia) modeled on frescoes of Georgia’s medieval Queen Tamar, they note. Its finale, which features women in strapless black dresses with red targets on their chests, draws from the traditional military dance, Khorumi.

Nonetheless, “to be true to the folk roots of our dance and create something new” is “very difficult,” conceded Iliko Sukhishvili.

One American professional dancer agrees. Overall, modern dance’s “fluid movement is at odds with the strict pattern of most Georgian dance,” noted Mira Cooks, a dancer with the New-York-City-based Battery Dance Company. In 2013, the New York troupe staged master-classes for Georgian dancers that emphasized improvisation and “breaking the rigid gender-conscious code that is typical of the Georgian dances.”

Breaking norms is a routine with which the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili is familiar. In the late 1920s, Nino Ramishvili danced with her later husband, Iliko Sukhishvili, in male national costume, whipping off her hat at the end to show the audience that she was a woman. The dance (Ilouri) has since become a standard performance.

Other innovations have included Latin dances, and a “folkotheque” experiment the company brought on stage in 2004 to combine Georgian and dance-club music. The experiment sparked Georgian youngsters to try out the moves themselves in Georgian discos, Nino Sukshishvili claimed.

How far most Georgian viewers are willing to go with this latest transformation of the company remains an open question, according to David Bukhrikidze, a theater critic at the news-monthly Liberali.

By “mixing traditional and electronic music as well as Georgian dance elements with modern ones,” the project “is bound to divide,” Bukhridze said.

The project is not the first modern-dance venture for Georgia, but traditionalists indeed frown upon it as non-Georgian, or simply bewildering. “A confused jumble of movements, without a clear direction,” scoffed one 42-year-old woman. “I don’t see the point, really.”

Forty-three-year-old former Sukhishvili soloist Tea Darchia, whose daughter, Mariam Matiashvili, dances in the Ramishvilebi, thinks that the group is “too early for the Georgian audience,” just like the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili itself “was too early for the audience in the 1940s.”

The troupe’s “productions take a few years to get to people’s heart[s], but then they are there to stay,” said Darchia, who danced with the company for 28 years.

Otar Kantaria, a 30-year-old international-development professional, already calls the modern-dance shows “pure energy,” with music that “takes Georgian sound to another level.”

Such enthusiasm also can be seen among younger dance students in this ever-dancing country.

The modern-dance group’s creators, as well as participants, stress that they only welcome the debate. Said 20-year-old Tatia Ukleba, part of the Ramishvilebi’s symbolic trio of dancers in red, “healthy criticism makes you stronger.” 

Editor's Note: 

Dance and journalism often go together. Tbilisi-based journalist Monica Ellena previously danced with an amateur contemporary dance ensemble, and graduated from university with a dissertation about American modern dance in the 1940s-1970s. Caucasus news editor Elizabeth Owen studies Georgian dance with the Georgian National Ballet Sukhishvili and dances with an amateur ensemble. Photographer Justyna Mielnikiewicz also has studied Georgian dance.

A TIMELY EXHIBITION: Legacy at Side Gallery - Russia, Ukraine, Georgia & South Caucasus. Curated by George Georgiou

Legacy at Side Gallery, curated by George Georgiou, celebrates some of the best documentary photography coming out of this torn and fertile ground.

The second of Side Gallery’s Eurovisions exhibitions, linked to the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Legacy looks at the new East-West borderlands of the former Soviet Union republics. Struggles for independence and identity take place against the intensifying backdrop of a geo-political battle between Russia and European Union. — mit Mila Teshaieva, Oksana Yushko, Kerry Side-Gallery, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Rafal Milach, Maria Morina, Donald Weber, Olga Kravets und Lucia Ganieva hier: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

CURRENT EXHIBITION

(amber-online.com/side-gallery) LEGACY: Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, & The Caucasus

George Georgiou, Lucia Ganieva, Mila Teshaieva, Rafal Milach, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Donald Weber, Olga Kravets, Maria Morina, Oksana Yushko, Alexander Chekmenev

Saturday 17 May - Sunday 20 July

The second of Side Gallery’s Eurovisions exhibitions, linked to the 25th anniversary of the coming down of the Berlin Wall, Legacy looks at the new East-West borderlands of the former Soviet Union republics. Struggles for independence and identity take place against the intensifying backdrop of a geo-political battle between Russia and European Union. Through a series of imaginative landscapes the exhibition explores shared histories, isolation and engagement, tradition and the desire for modernity.

Curated by George Georgiou, who brings his own work, IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEAR, it celebrates some of the best documentary photography coming out of this torn and fertile ground.

In Udmurtia, in the heart of the Russian landmass, Lucia Ganieva explores DREAMING WALLS, the exotic photolandscapes opening up from domestic interiors that are a recurring motif throughout the region. From her Caspian Sea project, PROMISING WATERS, Mila Teshaieva shows her work on Azerbaijan, its vast oil and gas reserves shape shaping the senses of both state power and individual insecurity.

In BLACK SEA CONCRETE, Rafal Milach explores Ukraine and Crimea: ‘Once the whole Soviet Union took its holidays in the resorts of the Black Sea. Soviet vacationers left behind Soviet architecture, mentality and sentiment.’ Fellow Polish member of the international collective Sputnik Photos, Justyna Mielnikiewicz has lived in Georgia for 12 years – WOMAN WITH A MONKEY is her tribute to an ‘unpredictable, timeless, Fellini-esque country, both cruel and hilarious.’

Donald Weber’s INTERROGATIONS opens up on the policemen, working girls, thugs, dissidents and hustlers in Ukranian police stations, their disturbing portraits expanding or sense of what it means to be a bit part in the dark opera of encounters with power. In GROZNY: NINE CITIES, members of the Russian photography collective Verso Images, Olga Kravets, Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko have created a multimedia photo novel exploring the different aspects of the Chechnyan city reduced to rubble in two wars.

Legacy was planned in 2013, before the events in Ukraine, which continue to unfold. The portraits in Ukranian photographer Alexander Chekmenev’s WARRIORS are from the barricades of Euromaidan in Kiev and were taken during the February revolution.

PHOTOREPORTAGE: Post-Crimea, Phantom of Armenian Separatism Haunts Georgia. By Paul Rimple and Photography by Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

Amarcum Arakyan, an ethnic Armenian, cuts the hair of Josif Petriashvili, a Georgian, in the city of Akhaltsikhe.

Slideshow with Photos are here >>>

(eurasianet.org) For many in Georgia, Russia’s annexation Crimea is reigniting fears about separatism rooted in ethnic conflict and Kremlin meddling. But now Georgians aren’t just worrying about the breakaway entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they also are concerned about the loyalty of the predominantly ethnic-Armenian region of Samtskhe-Javakheti.

  While locals dismiss separatism concerns as nonsense, some say the speculation on the issue is indicative of a failure on the Georgian central government’s part to address complaints of the country’s Armenian-speaking minority in Samtskhe-Javakheti, which is roughly a three-hour drive south of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Officials contend progress has been made, but concede more can be done on the inclusivity issue.

A mountainous, ragtag region bordering both Turkey and Armenia, Samtskhe‐Javakheti contains roughly 250,000 ethnic Armenians; 55 percent of the region’s total population, according to Georgia’s latest census, compiled in 2002. Knowledge of the Georgian language here can run thin. At the same time, in the view of some outsiders, sympathy for Russia, which, until 2007, operated a 15,000-man base in the regional town of Akhalkalaki, can run strong.

Over the past few weeks, suspicions among Georgians about the country’s Armenian minority have risen, fueled by memories of Tbilisi’s 2008 conflict with Russia, as well as the Kremlin’s recent land-grab in Crimea. Underscoring those suspicions was the appearance of unconfirmed media reports about ethnic Armenians from Samtskhe-Javakheti allegedly applying, en masse, to receive Russian passports.

Senior Georgian government officials have denied categorically these reports, but, as Russia-Ukraine tension threatens to boil over, such media coverage, condemned as sensationalism by three local watchdog groups, could well continue. “Somebody is interested in stirring up the water,” commented Seda Melkumian, the Samtskhe‐Javakheti representative for the Ombudsman’s Office. “So far, I haven’t met one person with a Russian passport.”

Interethnic suspicion stems from a long-time tug-of-war over greater language rights for the region’s Armenian speakers; for some Georgians, it’s a campaign reminiscent of ethnic Russians’ complaints in Crimea.

But residents adamantly deny that such a struggle could encourage them to break with Tbilisi. “We aren’t separatists,” asserted Melik Raisian, a former member of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition from Akhalkalaki. “We are Georgian citizens. Why do we always have to prove we’re not separatists for wanting our rights?”

The separatist perception is generally connected to the United Javakh Democratic Alliance (“Javakh”), a nationalist movement that has called for political autonomy in the past. Many of the movements’ key members, including leader Vahag Chakhalian, were arrested in 2008 following a fatal bombing near the home of a police chief in the town of Akhalkalaki. Chakhalian was released in 2013 as part of Georgia’s mass amnesty of prisoners.

Javakh has little influence today, although many can identify with its grievances. The 2007 closure of Akhalkalaki’s Russian army base left many locals unemployed; as of 2012, the official unemployment rate stood at 7.5 percent. Many had hoped to find work on the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway, which goes through Javakheti, yet few have been employed.

The lack of economic opportunities drives many residents to Russia for work. Melkumian estimates that about half of Javakheti’s families have some family member in Russia. “In the villages, every family has somebody there,” she said.

That situation, though, is no different from elsewhere in Georgia, noted Ewa Chylinski, director of the European Center for Minority Issues in Tbilisi. As of this January, the Russian Federation ranked as the largest source of Georgia’s remittances, roughly $46.6 million in 2013, according to the National Bank of Georgia.

Nonetheless, the money trail does not mean a desire for independence. Chylinski rejected the notion of a separatist threat in Javakheti as “groundless.” The main problem is not autonomy, but language, she said. People cannot participate in Georgian society if they do not speak Georgian.

But for many in Samtskhe-Javakheti, that does not affect their identification with Georgia. “I’m Armenian, but I was born in Georgia. My father was born in Georgia. His father was born in Georgia and I will live in Georgia,” declared octogenarian Artush Artkopian, speaking via a teenage translator in Armenian since his knowledge of Georgian and Russian is limited.

Last year, Akhalkalaki's local council announced plans to petition the Georgian parliament to ratify the European Charter for Regional of Minority Languages, a Council of Europe convention that would make Armenian an official local language for Samtskhe-Javakheti. Getting no support in Tbilisi, where opposition from the Georgian Orthodox Church and politicians runs strong, the matter was soon dropped.

The central government, though, has taken some concrete steps to increase knowledge of Georgian. In 2010, the Ministry of Education established a program, called the “4 + 1” system,” which established a 5-percent quota for ethnic minorities in Georgian universities. Minority applicants to four-year higher educational facilities take an entrance exam in their own language, as well as an intensive one-year Georgian-language course.

Shorena Tetvadze, director of the Akhalkalaki branch of the Zurab Zhvania School of Public Administration, deems the program a success. After six years of 4 + 1, 130 ethnic Armenians graduated from Georgian universities in 2013, compared with only two in 2006, she said.

Akhalkalaki’s five grammar schools all teach Georgian, a policy the State Ministry for Reconciliation and Civic Equality calls a relative success. Three are Armenian-language schools, one is Russian and the other a Georgian school, with an enrollment of 120. Tetvadze, who is half ethnic Armenian, thinks more parents would enroll their children in the Georgian school if they did not fear assimilation. But 45 kilometers north of Akhalkalaki, in the ethnically mixed regional seat of Akhaltsikhe, 68-year-old barber Ambarcum Arakian dismissed that concern.

“Here, we’re all natives. The Georgians know Armenian and the Armenians know Georgian,” Arakian emphasized. He added that his grandson is attending university via the 4+1 program, and his granddaughter is going to a Georgian-language kindergarten “so she will know Georgian better.”

“I’m not afraid of assimilation,” he said. “We won’t lose our culture.” 

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

PHOTOGRAPHY: EurasiaNet's 2013 Photos of the Year (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Istanbul's city center exploded in protest during the summer, Syria's civil war continued through the year, the targeting of undocumented workers in Russia intensified, and America's use of the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan soon comes to an end. These, and hundreds of other stories, were covered by our contributing photojournalists and documentary photographers in 2013. It is through their eyes and by capturing with their cameras that EurasiaNet.org can present unique stories of people, events, and humanity in the South Caucasus, throughout Central Asia, across the Anatolian Plain, and over the rolling steppe of Mongolia.

These images are a look back at EurasiaNet's best photo coverage of news and stories from 2013. Although all of the excellent photos and hard work from our photographers cannot be featured on this select gallery of images, you can review all of our posted Photo Essays hereand our posted Audio Slideshows here.

A fence erected along the border of Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia is disrupting daily life in area villages. (Molly Corso)

Nakhshun Gasparova shows one of the few things she took with her when she fled the Nagorno Karabakh war. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

The Firuza sanatorium in Borjomi is the only operational spa left almost untouched from the Soviet era. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Women comfort each other during a Tbilisi ceremony memorializing the conflict over Abkhazia. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgian soldiers disembark at the Manas Transit Center, in Kyrgyzstan, after a charter flight from Tbilisi. (David Trilling)

A Rustavi steel factory in Georgia is among the major buyers of scrap metal, which is melted and re-used. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

Students with the Tbilisi public school for visually impaired children rehearse for an upcoming concert. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

A history of Borjomi bottles is displayed in the entrance hall of Borjomi Bottling Factory # 2. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

War vet Mnats Sarkisian fought for Armenia 25 years ago during the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. (Anahit Hayrapetyan)

Anton Pilossian pauses behind the curtain before the start of a show of Tbilisi’s 125-year-old circus. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Georgia’s famous Borjomi mineral water winds it way through the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. (Justyna Mielnikiewicz)

Scrap metal workers strip rebar from an abandoned factory in Rustavi, Georgia. (Temo Bardzimashvili)

PHOTO ESSAY: Georgia: Two Decades Later, Still Searching for the Missing. By Paul Rimple, Molly Corso, and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(photogallery: eurasianet.org) The last time 76-year-old Venera Oshoridze saw her son, Kakha, was September 15, 1993.

A pensive 20-year-old who loved his friends, his mother’s fried potatoes, and dreamed of going to college, Kakha volunteered to fight in the Abkhaz war just days before Tbilisi lost the battle for Sokhumi on September 27, 1993.
“He wasn’t like the others. He was a quiet boy, always thinking about something,” Oshoridze said, pointing to photo of a serious young man with solemn brown eyes. 

Both of Oshoridze’s sons went to war, but while her elder son returned, Kakha vanished without a trace. Like nearly 2,000 other men and women (most of them Georgian) from the 1992-1993 war between Tbilisi and separatist forces in Abkhazia, he has been missing for the past two decades. 

Immediately after the conflict, Oshoridze started looking for her son, as scores of Abkhaz and Georgian parents joined forces to locate, identify and, when possible, rebury their children. 

The grassroots effort, eventually led by the Georgian non-governmental organization Molodini (Expectations) and the Abkhaz NGO Mothers of Abkhazia for Peace & Social Justice, used personal connections and references from government officials to find answers. 

Georgian parents like Oshoridze traveled to Abkhazia to search, learning firsthand of their children’s deaths through scraps of clothing and body remains. Working together with the Abkhaz, they unearthed and identified bodies based on fragments -- a bandaged arm, dollars folded in a pocket, the remains of a synthetic jacket.

Eventually, the bilateral search helped return 314 bodies to Abkhaz and Georgian families, according to historian Vladimir Dobordjginidze, who, together with the current Georgian state minister for reintegration, Paata Zakareishvili, was involved in the initial project. 

Finding the missing and returning the dead, noted Dobordjginidze, whose son, Zura, disappeared during the fight for Sokhumi, is a non-political issue that provided a connection between Abkhaz and Georgians. “We had great contacts [with the Abkhaz],” he said. “My son died, but that does not mean I am mad at them. We met as ordinary people.”

The Abkhaz also emphasize the “humanitarian” nature of the initiative. “In the Caucasus, it’s important to go to your loved one’s grave. [It’s] like a birthday,” said Asida Lomaia, a project associate for the Mothers of Abkhazia for Peace & Social Justice. Her cousin, Arzamet Tarba, is among those missing. 

“It doesn't matter what nationality -- you keep hope that they may be alive.”
The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, which resulted in Moscow formally acknowledging breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, has complicated the search for the missing.

The last exchange, in 2006, involved the return of 62 bodies from a mass grave of 95 Georgians at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport. (And the return of the living as well -- two young women, said Dobordjginidze).

Another two bodies from Sokhumi were sent to Georgian families “via independent channels” this spring, according to Leonid Lakerbaia, Abkhazia’s de-facto prime minister.

The 2008 war heightened the sensitivity of these joint searches for both sides, but also provided a new urgency for finding the missing. Inspired by the success of an ICRC-organized mission in breakaway South Ossetia, the Abkhaz and Georgians agreed to a Red-Cross proposal for a similar format for identifying the missing from the 1992-1993 war.

Kakhaber Kemoklidze, head of the analytical department at the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Tbilisi, said the ministry, which keeps records on missing individuals from the Abkhaz war, is willing to help efforts to locate and identify the missing. But, Kemoklidze added, it is as much an issue of trust as it is of political will.

Cooperation with de-facto Abkhaz authorities has not always been easy, Kemoklidze noted, adding that the ICRC’s role as mediators is “really important and invaluable.”

Lakerbaia agreed that the present operation would not be possible without the Red Cross’ help. “I don’t see any straight cooperation with Georgia possible,” he said, “but we have a common goal -- to find unknown remains, identify them and return them to their relatives. That’s the main task for all of us.”

Under the ICRC’s oversight, two official representatives from each side meet once a year in neutral locations, such as Istanbul, Kyiv and Yerevan, to compare and exchange lists of names and information on gravesites. The information includes how bodies were buried, their condition, and the names of any witnesses of the death or burial. 

Agreement now has been reached to continue the search at Sokhumi’s Glory Park, where the bodies and remains of 63 unknown individuals are buried. The ICRC recently sent DNA samples from this first batch of remains, exhumed by Argentine forensic scientists, to Zagreb, Croatia for comparison with DNA from families of the missing. Russia, which has troops stationed in Abkhazia, is not involved in the process.

Meanwhile, the families wait. “The exhumation process for many mothers is a starting process of non-acceptance to acceptance. The families need some sense of closure,” said Khatuna Logua, a psychologist at the ICRC office in Sokhumi.
Psychological counselling for these families, whether in Sokhumi or Georgian-controlled territory, has not been an official priority. “Some people don’t want to believe their relatives are dead,” said Logua. “You hear people talk of fantasies of secret prisons [containing the missing] on both sides.”

So far, noted Oshonidze and other Georgian parents, time has worked against identification efforts. Surviving family members of the missing have died or moved, taking with them vital information that could help identify bodies.
For Georgian pensioner Tristin Andriadze, whose son, Konstantin, went missing in October 1993, the only hope is that families on both sides will be given another chance to find their loved ones. “After so many years, it is likely they are dead, but, in my heart, I still have hope that something will be found; at least, where they were buried,” he said. 

Editor's Note: 

Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Justyna Mielnikiewicz from Georgia in Paris for the "La Quatrième Image" Show.

©Justyna MIELNIKIWICZ-Georgia
For the "La Quatrième Image" show.
Paris, November 2013

Justyna MIELNIKIWICZ:
Lives in Georgia, mainly focuses the countries of the former Soviet Union. Regularly cooperates with The New York Times, Newsweek Poland and Eurasianet.org. Her works have been published in various international publications such as Monocle, Newsweek International, Marie Claire , GEO France, Russian Reporter, Le Monde ,German Yearbook of Reporters without Borders - among others.

Between 2001-2010 worked on a project about the South Caucasus and its conflicts to be published as a book in 2013 and titled : Woman With a Monkey.

Since 2010, started to explore a new topic dedicated to women, sexuality and gender issues in the former Soviet space in a series of storied under the working title: “What Would People Say?”

more: laquatriemeimage.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: In pictures: Georgia by Justyna Mielnikiewicz (bbc.co.uk)

(bbc.co.uk) Justyna Mielnikiewicz moved to Georgia 11 years ago to document life in the Caucasus region. She has also photographed stories in Russia, Central Asia, Ukraine and Turkey. In this scene, children jump off a rock face next to a waterfall in Tbilisi’s Botanical Garden

Gallery here bbc.co.uk

Related Stories Georgia Direct 

Related Internet links Justyna Mielnikiewicz

 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Georgia: Officials See Trade as Way to Promote Ossetian Peace. By Paul Rimple and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) In the Georgian village of Ergneti, many still look at the South Ossetian peace process down the barrel of a gun. But villagers and the Georgian government hope that, one day, progress will be measured by growing trade at the local market.

Located between South Ossetian and Georgian checkpoints on the road between the Georgian regional center of Gori and the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, Ergneti today is one of the coldest spots in the frozen conflicts involving Georgia and the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. That wasn’t always the case: the town was once the site of one of the largest wholesale markets in the Caucasus.

A decade ago, thousands of ethnic Ossetians, Georgians and others used to mingle and trade freely each day, despite the territorial conflicts among them. Then, in 2004, the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili closed the market down on the grounds that it was a smuggling den that was costing the Georgian state $120 million per year in lost tax revenue.

For Ergneti residents, the market’s closure meant a loss of jobs and income. Still trying to rebuild homes that were looted and razed by South Ossetian militia during the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, their options for employment are now few. The village’s perilous location discourages pretty much any economic activity other than subsistence farming. Georgian police manning the sandbagged border crossing point to a burned-out hotel 100 meters away and say there are no longer snipers there. Villagers point out where Russian tanks stand with their turrets aimed at them.

In a campaign speech last summer, calling the Ergneti market’s closure a huge mistake, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili promised to reopen the bazaar in a bid to normalize ties with South Ossetia.

But, in his efforts to make that pledge a reality, Prime Minister Ivanishvili needs South Ossetia’s cooperation and, so far, the separatists are in no hurry to re-establish links with Tbilisi. On January 28, Boris Chochiyev, the region’s de-facto prime minister, warned that resuming cross-border trade with Georgian-controlled territory would bring “great harm to the republic of South Ossetia." He added that the issue should be “removed from the agenda,” the South Ossetian news agency Res reported.

Many people in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, however, like the idea of reopening the Ergneti market, according to Zarina Sanakoeva, a Tskhinvali-based journalist for RFE/RL’s Ekho Kavkaza radio service. Yet, political reality is another matter. “If you talk about opening the market, first you need to deal with the crossing of the border,” Sanakoeva said. “Everyone understands this.”

Nearly five years after the war, nobody from Ergneti crosses the border, locals say. Visits from the South Ossetian side also no longer occur.

Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Paata Zakareishvili supports reopening the Ergneti market to revive ties with South Ossetia residents. Both South Ossetia and breakaway twin Abkhazia, he maintains, should be engaged, not isolated, and commerce is the most neutral tool for accomplishing that.

But he cautioned that it’s too early to talk about reopening the Ergneti market. “The project should exist, but the foundation is not ready yet,” Zakareishvili said.

Tskhinvali reportedly refuses to talk to Tbilisi until Georgian leaders recognize “the genocide” that South Ossetia’s de-facto government claims was committed against ethnic Ossetians during the 2008 war. Tbilisi’s policy “is not to respond to their [Ossetians’] rhetoric.” Instead, Zakareishvili said, the Georgian government aims to drop the aggressive language that he claims marked President Saakashvili’s territorial reintegration policies, and try to get Tskhinvali talking by clearing the air.

In South Ossetia’s case, this means providing gas, drinking water and irrigation to both sides of the administrative border, including to previously Georgian-held villages within South Ossetia. For Abkhazia, the focus is on restoring a railway from Tbilisi -- a proposal not universally embraced.

In January, President Saakashvili, who had also touted the railway idea in 2005, argued that addressing the issue outside of the context of the removal of Russian troops from Abkhazia would be “criminal and anti-Georgian.” Otherwise, the railway will “only serve Russia,” he charged.

Some independent Georgian analysts, including Giorgi Tarkan-Mouravi, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, agree. “Georgia and Abkahzia will just be a corridor for Russia and Armenia,” Tarkan-Mouravi predicted, in reference to the Russian military base near the Armenian town of Gyumri.

To Zakareishvili, that argument is weak. The railroad would bring benefits of economic development and reduced tensions to everyone, he insisted.

But before any progress can be made, he acknowledged, Russia will have to distance itself from its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s independence – an unlikely move. “Russia has been a hostage of its own stance,” Zakareishvili said.

In Ergneti, residents maintain that, for both sides, it was ordinary people who ended up being the war’s biggest losers. The process of forgiveness needs more time and contact must be made, they say. Right now, the phone is the only option for contact between families and friends separated by just a few kilometers.

“We have to start talking and it’s possible,” said one Ergneti veteran of the 2008 war. “We need the market.”

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.

PHOTOESSAY: Georgia: The Tbilisi Circus Comes with Conflict Resolution, Plus Clowns. By Paul Rimple and Justyna Mielnikiewicz (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Hundreds of spectators drop their jaws and look up to watch a man suspended from the ceiling by his arms. His wife, suspended above him, steps on his head, then his back, and twirls him like a pinwheel as they slowly float down to the center of the ring.

Tbilisi’s 125-year-old circus is back in action, and its shows, playing to sell-out crowds, are proving that, for all the ethnic and geopolitical differences that split apart the Soviet Union, under the big top, circus performers remain part of one big family.

“Circus artists are not political,” commented 76-year old circus caretaker Arkady “Shekir” Parsadanishvili, who, in Soviet times, performed with a team of ethnic Uzbek, Georgian and North Caucasian “djigits” or stunt-horsemen. “They have no nationality.”

Instead, they have talent. Past armed conflicts over breakaway South Ossetia notwithstanding, a seven-man troupe of ethnic Ossetian trick-equestrians, the Ensemble Alania, was a Tbilisi-crowd favorite at a show this January.

"We worried how the Georgian public will meet us, an Ossetian team,” the group, whose members hail from throughout the Russian Federation, conceded on Facebook. A posted video indicates that all went well.

Their arrival even supposedly improved the health of retired rider Shekir. In a New Year’s Eve toast, he told the Ossetian riders that his blood pressure had normalized with their arrival in Tbilisi, and that his traumatized legs even seemed to hurt less.

Being a djigit is not about being “an acrobat on a horse,” commented ensemble member Arsen Batiyev, a 53-year circus veteran from North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation. It is about “character, temperament, style . . . the Caucasus.”

As elsewhere in the region, the civil unrest and economic crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse dealt a blow to Georgia’s state-financed collective of circus artists, many of whom ended up retiring or moving abroad to work.

But although economic times, including in Georgia, may have improved, some aspects of the Soviet circus culture have now vanished.

Russian tiger tamer, Olga Denisova, whose father was a first-generation acrobatics instructor at the prestigious Moscow State Circus School, said the old-time family dynasties of circus virtuosos are starting to disappear as more athletes join the circus ranks. “They’re sport people and don’t know anything about the circus,” Denisova said.

The history of the Georgian circus goes back to 1888, when the big top went up as the first in a network of circuses set up throughout the then Russian Empire. After its original building burned down in 1911, the circus moved on to a wine factory, before setting up shop in 1939 inside its present neo-classical, Stalin-era home in central Tbilisi. The building’s 2,000-seat capacity ranked it among the largest circuses in the Soviet Union, alongside Moscow, Kyiv and Baku.

After the circus fell into disrepair during the 1990s, the late Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsiashvili bought the circus in 2003 and began extensive renovations, in what he claimed was a labor of love.

The circus closed in 2007 after Patarkatsiashvili backed protests against President Mikheil Saakashvili and was accused of conspiring to overthrow the government. It took Patarkatsiashvili’s sister, Mzia Tortladze, until New Year’s Eve 2011 to reopen the circus.

Political dynamics aside, the most difficult hurdle was gaining the respect of the circus world, commented General Director Levan Gagvishvili. “We, the management, have no circus background and weren’t trusted. But we established our reputation after the second show, which was with an international collective . . . ” Gagvishvili recounted.

That reputation is critical. The circus world is an underground society. Unlike professional athletes who become household names and gain corporate sponsorships, the glory for circus artists comes from recognition by their peers.

With that in mind, the circus’s new directors have a vision to put Tbilisi on the world circus map, and to invite more stars, including the acclaimed Cirque du Soleil.

The circus, though, remains an uphill struggle. Georgia’s moribund economic situation means that “tickets need to be cheap;” between 10 to 25 laris (about $6 to $15), Gagvishvili said. To make ends meet, the circus rents out its building for birthday parties and is looking into setting up a kindergarten, too.

But for celebrated clown Anton Pilossian, a native Tbilisian whose face adorns a series of Grenadine postage stamps of world-famous clowns, the circus is not a business, but an art.

“A clown can exist without a circus, but a circus can barely exist without a clown,” noted Pilossian, who last performed in Tbilisi in 1986.

The proof – not surprisingly, some observers might add with a wink – can be found in the Caucasus itself, where the art of performance, in all aspects of life, can run deep and strong.

“I was in Yerevan once and met a very big minister, [an] important man,” Pilossian recollected. “He said to me, ‘You know, deep down inside, I am a clown. Just don’t you tell anybody.’”

Editor's Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.