PHOTOGRAPHY: Caucasian Shepherds Diary (flickr.com)

In august 2011 I was going to the mountains near akhmeta, why it doesnt matter. it was a good decision. to be in the mountains is like a therapy, you can cry and laugh, and you are free in a beautiful landscape. this boy was the first shepherd, i ever met, and still i like him. other people said he is ugly, for me not, his heart is pure. 

more: Pankisi (Video)

TIME LightBox: Red Thistle: The Rhythm of Life in the Caucasus. By Davide Monteleone (lightbox.time.com)

(lightbox.time.com) Davide Monteleone traces the genesis of his new book of photographs, Red Thistle, to 2007, when he heard about a film festival going on in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. At the time, Chechnya had been locked down for nearly a decade under a special security regime. Known as the KTO, the Russian acronym for “counter-terrorist operation,” the regime had meant years of martial law, curfews and random searches enforced by the Russian military. Not exactly the place for something like Sundance–the region’s film festival was a fluke, a rare chance for some foreigners to have a look around, and Monteleone took it. With his companion, Lucia Sgueglia, who would end up writing the text for Red Thistle, he would sneak out of the guarded hotel to explore Grozny.

“We did this until the Russian troops would catch us and take us back,” Monteleone said. “Then we would go out again.”

What he found was a region slowly restoring the rhythm of life—a weird, entrancing, pensive rhythm—after two devastating wars with Russia fought between 1994 and 2000. After the second war, the U.N. had deemed Grozny “the most destroyed city on earth,” but with billions of dollars in postwar Russian aide, the city had been rebuilt and revived. Over the next five years, Monteleone would return to Chechnya and the surrounding regions of the Caucasus Mountains as often as once a month.

“A lot of work had been done on the wars and the human rights abuses,” he said. “We wanted to study everyday life.”

In 2008, the KTO regime was lifted in Chechnya and travel there became easier, but life was still colored by Russia’s shadow and the legacy of the Soviet Union, which ruled this predominantly Muslim region for almost 70 years. So the settings of Monteleone’s photographs—from the beat-up old Zhiguli cars to the destitute apartment blocks—have a distinctly Soviet texture, a drab, heavy latticework that seems to press against the people inside it. Smiles are not common on the faces in his photos, but they seem to have a stubborn glow amid the grayness that surrounds them.

A common theme, predictably, is death, which is so insistent that it approaches a dulled ubiquity. If there is a kind of music to life in the Caucasus, mortality is its drumbeat in Monteleone’s work. In one frame, a woman in a black headscarf hurries along the sidewalk, not seeming to notice a stream of blood flowing toward her from a bull that was slaughtered in the street. There are weddings and funerals, and both seem to occasion equal measures of melancholy and warmth. At one wake in Chechnya, a group of men perform the Dhikr, an Islamic ritual which, in the local Sufi tradition, involves hours of rhythmic dancing and chanting until the men fall into a collective trance.

“You know that you’re in Russia,” says Monteleone. “But at the same time, life is structured in such a way that you feel closer to Persia or the Middle East.”

That is part of the duality of the Caucasus, which remains a world between worlds. The ongoing insurgency against Russian rule creeps in to remind you that the war goes on—a house stands demolished in one frame after Russian tanks moved in for a counter-insurgency strike—but there is also reconciliation: a group of men from one family walk down a mountain toward a mosque, where they resolve a blood feud with another family that had caused generations of strife. The overall picture is sad but not despondent, and there is resilience in almost every frame.

The unifying image of The Red Thistle comes from the opening scene in Lev Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murat, which begins with a man trying to pluck a crimson thistle from a ditch in the Caucasus mountains. The thistle fights back, stabbing his hand with its brambles, and only gives in when he has frayed the stem and mangled the flower. “What energy and tenacity!” the man thinks. “With what determination it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life.” 

Full Slideshow >>>

Simon Shuster is TIME’s Moscow reporter.

Davide Monteleone is a photographer with the VII agency. See more of his work here. Monteleone’s latest book, Red Thistle, was recently released by Dewi Lewis publishing.

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RED THISTLE

DAVIDE MONTELEONE

Red Thistle, the 2011 winner of The European Publishers Award for Photography, is a powerful and fascinating exploration of the important but relatively unknown region of the Northern Caucasus and its people. It lies between the Black and Caspian Seas and is within European Russia. Wars have been fought here for centuries – the most recent in Chechnya. Monteleone examines the stubborn, rebellious culture of this region, which although part of Russia, differs in the ethnicity, religion and social customs of its inhabitants.

‘If you shoot in the Caucasus, the echo will be heard for centuries,’ says an old proverb from the region.

Born in Italy 1974, Davide Monteleone studied engineering before moving first to the U.S. and then to England. It was here that he discovered his interest in photography and journalism. Returning to Italy in 2000, he completed his studies in photography and began to work with Italian magazines. From 2001 – 2003 he worked as correspondent for the photo agency Contrasto in Moscow. He began working with major international newspapers such as D, Io Donna, L’espresso, New York Times, Time, Stern, New Yorker, to name a few. Since 2003 he has lived part of each year in Italy and part in Russia, where he is pursuing long-term personal projects and continues his editorial work. He published his first book Dusha, Russian Soul in 2007, and La line inesistente in 2009. His features have won numerous awards including World Press Photo in 2007 and 2009, International Photo Award in 2008, Emerging Photographer Grant, Freelens Award, and the 2010 Aftermath Project Grant.

Previous winners of the European Publishers Award For Photography have included photographers such as Simon Norfolk, Bruce Gilden, Paulo Pelegrin, Klavdij Sluban, Jeff Mermelstein. Open to photographers world-wide, the competition is a unique collaboration between six European Publishers – Actes Sud (France), Apeiron (Greece), Dewi Lewis Publishing (UK), Kehrer Verlag (Germany), Peliti Associati (Italy), and Blume (Spain). 
  

AmazonShop: Books, Maps, Videos, Music & Gifts About The Caucasus

VIDEO: On the Farm, After the Fall - May 2011. By Julie Dressner (video.nytimes.com)

(video.nytimes.com) A trip to the post-Soviet republic of Georgia where agritourism draws visitors eager to help out with the farm chores and reap the bounty at the dinner table.

Journeys: In Former Soviet Georgia, Two Families and the Art of Hospitality

Justyna Mielnikiewicz for The New York Times

Shorena at the Nikolaishvili house. More Photos » 

Vazha and his vines. More Photos »

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Published: May 27, 2011

FIRST the roasted eggplant arrived, topped with walnut paste and pomegranate seeds, followed by seared red peppers glistening with oil, and a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, scattered with herbs. Then bread from a nearby kiln, a soul mate for the homemade cheese, which was akin to mozzarella with a sour kick. The two women of the house soon shuttled in with carafes of red and white wine, squeezed from grapes tended on the surrounding land and coaxed to life in cisterns out back. It was a fine finale — or so we thought — for our first lunch at a small farmstead in Georgia, the fertile backyard of the former Soviet Union.

We smiled and thanked the women. They chuckled, as if to say: silly guests, that does not make for a Georgian meal. And as a fire crackled in the hearth, they kept crowding the broad wooden table with platters — chicken grilled under a brick, chubby spiced meat dumplings, stuffed cabbage and numerous accompaniments.

“Almost everything that we eat here, we grow on our own,” our host, Vazha Nikolaishvili, later told us.

We marveled at the repast, as well as the location: Kakheti, a lush region of Eastern Georgia known for its winemaking, where blooming agritourism ventures offer a chance to see how private farming has revived since the end of the dismal collective agriculture of Communism.

Last fall, joined by my wife and three children, I journeyed two hours by car from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to Kakheti, but decided against a hotel in favor of a three-day stay with the Nikolaishvili family in the village of Tsinandali. On our arrival, we were greeted by Vazha, the patriarch of the family, a charming and chatty man who looked like Pablo Picasso.

During a tour of the property in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains, he explained in a raspy voice how he produces wine from grapes that he tends around his house and on 15 acres nearby. He also has persimmon, and other fruit trees, and raises vegetables as well.

“When we harvest grapes and other crops, my friends, my son’s friends, come to help us, 50 or 60 men come to help us,” he said. “My wealth is my friends.”

The Nikolaishvili family has even branched into organic crops, and has helped to champion an association of Georgian organic producers called Elkana, a nongovernmental association that is trying to nurture organic farming across the country.

In recent years, local growers like the Nikolaishvilis have begun to throw open their doors to tourists, showing off Georgia’s robust traditions of hospitality, which endured even during the Soviet era. Back then, Georgia was a popular vacation spot for the Communist elite, with its soaring mountains and Black Sea coast. Even now, Georgian cuisine has a cherished niche throughout the former Soviet Union — a jazzy cousin to more staid Slavic food.

The accommodations at the Nikolaishvili’s were not fancy: the five of us slept in a couple of rustic bedrooms in the main house; the bathroom was in a separate building a short walk away. In the spring and fall, nighttime temperatures can dip close to freezing. A wood stove in the kitchen provided heat, though it did not always reach our bedrooms. (Guests are welcome year-round, though the nonwinter months are preferable. Call 995-99-260-215 or e-mail nik.nikolaishvili@gmail.com for reservations.)

Still, we were treated warmly by Mr. Nikolaishvili and his family, who delighted in describing rural customs and teaching us to cook Georgian specialties. The price was more than reasonable — $35 a night per person, including copious quantities of that delicious food and house wine. (Fresh-squeezed grape juice for the children, too.)

Mr. Nikolaishvili, 62, and his wife, Tina, 58, did not speak English, so we communicated with them in Russian, which they learned during Soviet times. Their English-speaking son, Niko, 35, and daughter-in-law, Shorena, 26, were at the ready to translate for foreigners.

Of course, it was not all eating and chatting — there was work to be done.

From the first milking of their cow at dawn to the baking of bread at night, we took part in the farm’s chores. Vazha demonstrated how the grapes were picked, pressed and fermented, especially the classic Georgian varietals, rkatsiteli (white) and saperavi (red). Though he has his own label, he said that most of his yield — he produces as many as 70,000 bottles a year — he sells wholesale. He also distills chacha, a punch-to-the-gut brew made from grape skins and other remains of the fermentation process.

The alluring property was covered with grapevines on trellises, and the children played tag around the vegetable plots in the waning autumn sunlight.

They also loved loitering in the kitchen with Tina and Shorena, learning how to cook dishes like the spiced meat dumplings called khinkali. “That’s not quite right,” Shorena gently chided, holding up a lumpy dumpling that looked as if it had been mangled by a toddler. Everyone laughed, and started over again.

The highlight of our time in the kitchen was making walnut bars called churchkhela, a cherished harvest event in Georgia. The women boiled a pot of fresh grape juice, vigorously stirring it and thickening it with flour. The children took strings of walnuts and dipped them into the mixture, forming a gooey coating. The strings were hung to dry around the house, the treats later gnawed upon for the rest of the trip.

Vazha liked nothing more than to pour a glass of rkatsiteli — or several — and sit in front of the fire in the dining room and talk. He recalled that he learned the virtues of hospitality from his grandfather, who planted the ancestors of some of the grape vines still on the property. When someone stopped by, whether for business or pleasure, his grandfather first ushered them to the table.

“Whatever there was in the house, it could be anything, it could be something simple — salt and bread, cheese and greens — he would pour wine and only after that would he ask, ‘What is the purpose of your visit, what do you need, how can I help you?’ “Mr. Nikolaishvili said.

“Why are we alive?” he added, rhetorically. “Isn’t it to meet people, to offer them a good meal, to share a meal with them? Georgians love having guests, and we want the entire world to know that.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 29, 2011, on page TR7 of the New York edition with the headline: Home Cooking in Georgia (Not That One). 

Go to the Georgia Travel Guide »

Multimedia

On the Farm, After the Fall

 

Slide Show

Home Cooking in Georgia (Not That One)

PHOTOESSAY: Georgia: Love Your Country, Love Your Chokha. By Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Paul Rimple (eurasianet.org)

Slideshow with photos by Justyna Mielnikiewicz >>>

France may be known for its berets, and Spain for its mantillas, but few national costumes are linked to as strong a sense of national pride as Georgia’s chokhas.

Dating from the Middle Ages, the chokha is a calf-length, wool coat for men inherent to the Caucasus, distinguishable by the bandoliers sewn across the breast and its tapered waist cut. Accessories typically include a hood, tall leather boots and a belt holding a long, embossed dagger, called a khanjali.

But this is no party costume. Nearly every Georgian household has photos of ancestors adorned in chokhas. Once a symbol of resistance to Bolshevik Russia’s 1921 takeover of an independent Georgia, the chokha has now come to represent a Georgia reborn, a country that revels in its cultural individuality.

Increasingly worn by Georgian men at weddings and official functions, the eye-catching coat is finally experiencing a comeback.

“When you love your chokha, you love your country. When you love your country, you love your traditions,” elaborated 60-year-old Rezo Sulava, a leader of the All-Georgia Chokha Society.

The chokha revival is taking place in parallel with a resurgence of interest in other mainstays of Georgian culture – the Georgian Orthodox Church, Georgian folk dancing, and choral singing.

Holding onto the country’s chokha tradition, though, has not always been easy. By the early 20th century, European fashions had replaced the chokha; in Soviet times, the coat was largely a stage costume, mostly worn in public by Georgian folk dance ensembles.

“The chokha has been in a terrible coma and we’re trying to resurrect it,” said Luarsab Togonidze, a folklorist and co-owner of Samoseli Pirveli ( “First Clothes”), a slick Tbilisi boutique that specializes in the recreation of traditional Georgian clothing.

By studying museum collections, old photographs and private wardrobes throughout the country, Togonidze and his business partner, Levan Vasadze, created a chokha atelier (prices start at 200 lari, about $113 ) for a growing niche market.

That market – among it, the glitterati of Georgian artistic and theater circles – turned out in number at a February 6 fashion show Samoseli Pirveli staged in a champagne factory outside of Tbilisi.

Sashaying and swaying through the crowd, dancers from Georgia’s Sukhishvili and Rustavi folk dance ensembles showed off embroidered, Sleeping-Beauty-style wedding gowns for women, fitted, cropped jackets with cummerbunds for men, and, of course, chokhas.

But, unlike many Georgian traditionalists, Togonidze caters to customers looking for more contemporary takes on these long-established looks. His designers also create made-to-order dresses inspired by chokhas – a fashion statement embraced by many of the women attending the Samoseli Pirveli fashion show.

Some Georgians, however, feel that altering the design of the chokha is tantamount to sacrilege.

“Women shouldn’t wear chokhas,” asserted All- Georgia Chokha Society leader Sulava. The society’s 1,000 male members, or “chokhosanebi” (literally, “chokha people”), are headed by the powerful Patriarch Ilia II and act as the patriarch’s honorary guards, attending all religious celebrations and national festivals in uniform.

Set up in 1952 as an attempt to protect Georgian traditions from Soviet encroachment, the league today tries to preserve Georgian traditions from globalization.

“The chokha emphasizes I am a Georgian. It is a spiritual costume,” Sulava elaborated.

Sukhishvili dancer Tea Darchia, though, rebuffs that disapproval. “Pants were made for men and women wear them. Why can’t we wear the chokha?” Darchia posited.

Others, though, like event organizer Sandro Kakulia, believe that wearing the chockha has become trendy for the wrong reasons. “It’s fashionable now, not because people love the symbol, but they are following a trend. It’s elitist,” Kakulia said.

But unlike most fashion trends, wearing a chokha demands a certain responsibility. Even boutique owner Togonidze, who is not a Society member, says “there’s something magic” to wearing a chokha. “It has an effect on your behavior. People treat you differently.”

Chokhosanebi follow a code that regulates everything from the color of the chokha they wear (burgundy, white, black and gray are the standard colors), to how it is worn (with high-collared shirts always buttoned to the top), to how men must sit with their khinjalis (not dangling between their legs and not pointing up at a neighbor).

Some, however, argue that such reverence reflects an unhealthy understanding of Georgia’s traditions, by promoting living in the past rather than looking to the future.

The Indie-rock group Dervishebi (Dervishes) performs a parody of the classic Georgian song “Suliko” in electric-colored chokhas and Converse high-tops -- much to the ire of Georgian traditionalists and conservative members of the Orthodox Church.

“Everyone has their own relationship with the chokha,” said Dervishebi singer Guga Gegetchkori. “It’s only a national dress, that’s all. It’s not holy. It’s like a t-shirt.”

Boutique co-owner Togonidze concedes that “chokha radicals” can get carried away.

The chokha may be a strong representation of Georgian national pride, he commented, but fans should keep their passion in perspective. “It’s the 21st century,” he said. “You don’t have to overdo it.”

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

PHOTOGRAPHY: A Review of 2010 - with pictures from the Caucasus. By Jonathan Makiri (jonathanmakiri.com)

The year plodded ahead and left me longing towards the end. I took a cursory glance back and felt little. I decided to take one last look through my 2010
archives for those images that somehow recede to the nethers [...]

You may view the latest post at here >>>

CULTURE: Guide to Caucasian Rugs (spongobongo.com)

Source: www.spongobongo.com/Caucasia

I take a stand somewhere between the two points. I suggest that the various people of the Caucasus wove distinctive patterns and structures prior to the Russian colonization of the Caucasus but that as Czarist control solidified they sought to stimulate carpet exports to pay for their occupation so that after the 1860s we see an increase in the commercialization of the Caucasian rugs and a decrease in the cultural relevance.In the 1820s the Czarist Russians divided Trans-Caucasia. into the Russian provinces of Baku, Derbent, Sheki, Karabagh, Shirvan, Talysh, and Kuba. Riad: Caucasus.

The Russians divided the region in the manner that was easiest for them to administrate and it did not necessarily follow an ethnographic approach in the division. The Czarist Russians began to solidify their hold as early as 1805 - 1820 but they did not truly control the region for many years. With the capture of the great rebel religious leader Shamyl in 1859 and the end of the rebellion in 1864 did Czarist control truly solidify regional control. In 1865 to eliminate risk of future rebellion the Russians forced 1,2 million Caucasians to move to Turkey.

At one point I suspected that areas such as Nagorno-Karabahk which were historically Moslem were depopulated and then repopulated with Armenians. As Christians the Armenians had an easier time with the Christian Russians. Lately I have come to realize that in the Caucasus' control focused on people rather than strict geographic boundaries. So with the Church and nobility to control the Armenians and Moslem rulers and Governors over the Moslem it was possible for two people to share some measure of independent rule in the same area in the same time. This tends to run counter to the European practice.To confuse the matter even more I suggest that many of the best rugs attributed to 4th quarter 19th century are actually 1st or even second quarter 20th century. A constant problem is that Rug Collecting is more about money and ego then it is a science. My hope is that by opening my notes, thoughts, and theories I may help to stimulate others to take this subject further than I can.

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Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1998 [for personal use only]
Trouble Is Looming for a Centuries-Old TradeCaucasus: Regional stability, mass production and modern life are ruining business for merchants of hand-woven carpets.
By VANORA BENNETT, Times Staff Writer

DERBENT, Russia -Under the fortress walls, the merchants of this honey-colored stone city at the crossroads of three empires are doing what their ancestors have done for 800 years: laying out hand-woven carpets for sale.

During centuries of conflict under Persian, Turkish and Russian empires, rug salesmen here traditionally have done lucrative business by buying family carpets from refugees on the run from warfare across the Caucasus Mountains and along the shores of the Caspian Sea. No more.

Something disastrous has started to happen to the region's hand-made carpet trade in the last two years: Peace keeps breaking out. "Look at it now," says woebegone trader Magomed Magomedov, forlornly gesturing around. Just a dozen carpets are pinned up outside the north side of the long defensive wall that Derbent's onetime Persian masters built in the 6th century.

Half a dozen men, all as small and hunched in their flapping black clothes as Magomedov, all with the same mournful expression, are waiting for buyers. "There's almost nothing left of our trade," Magomedov says. "Modern life is killing off the hand-made carpet business."

The region's carpet-making legacy from the great carpet cultures of Persia and Turkey was institutionalized under Soviet rule. Factories mass-produced carpets with approximately traditional designs, although village women went on weaving their own--and also continued the practice, frowned on by Communist Party bosses, of giving dowries of carpets at marriage.

The huge Derbent market spread across town every weekend. But the bonanza years for carpet dealers were right after the Soviet Union collapsed. The lands around Russia's southern border, a tinderbox of Christian and Muslim ethnic groups with long memories for old feuds, went up in flames.

In the five years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, there were conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Georgians and Abkhazian separatists, and Russians and Chechen separatists. In the early 1990s, more than a million people fled shattered villages and towns, taking with them only their bedding and carpets. With no money and no homes, the dispossessed were desperate to sell even such treasured symbols of stability and collective history as the carpets to buy food.

But now stability is returning to the region. The wars have stopped or been suspended. The refugees have sold their rugs, and many have found new homes and jobs; so have many of the traders from those days. The only carpets being made by hand and sold in Derbent are those of women here in the multiethnic republic of Dagestan.

But this domestic weaving was never intended as a money-making business and is done more for private, family purposes. Magomedov's wife, Asli, is one of the weavers. She has just dismantled the huge loom that stood all winter in front of the family television set. She, her 22-year-old daughter, Zulekha, and her two 20-year-old daughters-in-law, Gyulhara and Vilayad, worked for six months on the huge blue-and-red oblong carpet that now lies on the floor.

She's planning to start weaving again in the fall. Some of the Magomedovs' carpets are dowry offerings from the family's two new daughters-in-law. A betrothed woman's family still must provide at least one big carpet, a flat-weave rug, a runner and half a dozen cushions. Her mother and sisters can help her weave them, but the designs should be her own.

Traditional Caucasus carpets differ in design from region to region, village to village. They include both Persian motifs--intricate floral patterns--and wilder, brighter, coarser Turkish-influenced designs, with jagged flame-like shapes.

But some of the modern carpets, cushions, runners and wall hangings that decorate houses here have designs that draw as much from Western pop culture as Eastern tradition. Snoopys and Snow Whites crop up, along with compositions of pink-faced children and baskets of puppies.

Asli, who was laid off from her job at the near-bankrupt Soviet-era carpet factory a few years ago, loves weaving. She collects templates--patterns of tiny crosses on squared paper--just as some Western women collect knitting patterns. She studies them in her free moments, contemplating her next adventure in quiet creativity.

But, she complains, her work doesn't bring in much money. The most she can expect her husband to get for this winter's rug, measuring 6 feet by 10 feet, is $600."

Four of us worked on it for six months," she laments. "And that means we only earned $25 a month each. A pittance.

"The worst blow of all to the trade is the flippancy with which post-Soviet Dagestanis have begun to treat their traditions. Although it's still considered crucial to transfer carpets from family to family at marriage, her husband says, it's no longer a matter of pride to give the most beautiful and costly weaving possible.

And Russia's opening of its borders means that there's new competition in the rug business from an unexpected quarter: the West.

Inside Derbent's city walls, just yards from the deserted handmade carpet market, an altogether more flourishing trade is now going on in cheap Belgian or Belarussian carpets made with synthetic fibers.

These crackling, brownish rugs, with large swirly patterns, stand rolled up against walls, or are displayed on clotheslines or cars. Surly traders with none of the traditional carpet salesman's patter say they buy them from four or five big warehouses in Moscow and bring them down to the south for sale.

They cost only one-fifth as much as hand-woven rugs. "So what do people do before a wedding?" Magomedov asks with a mixture of indignation and resignation. "They know they've got to give carpets. But they couldn't care less what kind. So they get the cheapest possible Belgian thing and palm it off on their new family.

For people like that, respect for tradition is becoming no more than a formality."
Johnson's Russia List

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Guides to the Caucasian Rug
Notes on Afshan Carpets
Guide to Akstafa Rugs
Notes on Alpan rugs
Guide to Baku Rugs
Guide to Bordjalou rugs
Guide to Karachopf Gardabani Rugs
A Guide To Pin-wheel Kazak
Guide to Caucasian Flatweaves
Guide to Dagestan Rugs
Guide To Dragon Carpets
Guide to Fachralo Kazak Rugs
Guide To Gendge Rugs
Guide to Zakatala rugs
Guide to Georgian Pardaghys
Guide To Karabagh Rugs
Guide To Chelaberd Kazak Rugs
Guide to Karachopf Gardabani Rugs
Guide to Kazak Rugs
Guide to Akstafa Rugs
Guide To Kuba Rugs
Notes on Alpan rugs
Guide to Seychour Rugs
Guide To Marasali Rugs
Guide to Shahsevan
Guide To Shirvan Rugs
Talish Rugs the O'Connell Guide



more: www.morandicarpets.com

TRAVEL: Riding on the edge in Georgia (Tusheti) (guardian.co.uk)

Kevin Rushby faces his most hair-raising adventure yet on a horse ride with champion ex-jockey Richard Dunwoody in Georgia's Tusheti mountainsRead more about Kevin's adventure in tomorrow's Saturday Travel

Kevin Rushby
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 January 2011 14.21 GMT
Audioslideshow >>>

ART: Slideshow with paintings by Mikhail Shengelia (flickr.com)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Alex Webb, The Iron Silk Road +++ 81 images (magnumphotos.com)

The complications that have surrounded building a railway to link Baku, the oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan, with Eastern Turkey -- and thereby, in effect, linking China and Europe -- reflect the political tensions between the countries of the South Caucasus.

While a railroad line currently exists linking Turkey to Armenia to Georgia and from there to Azerbaijan, because of the Nagorno Karabakh War, the border between Armenia and Turkey has remained closed since the early 1990's. Recently, despite the historical enmity between the two countries, conciliatory overtures have been made, however to date the border remains closed. As a result, construction on a new railway line, heavily financed by Azerbaijan, has commenced. This new line carves a crescent around Armenia, linking Kars, Turkey to existing railway lines in Southern Georgia. Completion of the railway is scheduled for 2012.

Tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia continue to simmer, and were it not for Armenia's alliance with Russia, in all likelihood Azerbaijan would have invaded Nagorno Karabakh with the goal of retaking its breakaway state. However, Georgia's recent experience with Russian support for the breakaway state of South Ossetia and a resultant Russian invasion of northern Georgia suggests that an Azeri invasion of Nagorno Karabakh would be ill-advised.

These photographs explore the world of the South Caucasus, loosely following the proposed new railway line: from Kars, in Eastern Turkey into Georgia to Tbilisi and then on into Azerbaijan to Baku. There are also photographs from Armenia -- mostly near Yerevan -- as well as from the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh: a region still in ruins that remains mired in the memory of war.

slideshow >>>

PHOTOGRAPHY: Lagodekhi, Pona --- Herbst 2010. Von Hans Heiner Buhr

Great Light, clear autumn, nice portraits ... amazing landscape ... My german friend Hans lives for a long time in Georgia. Mostly he is in the capital of Georgia - Tbilisi. But he loves also the mountains of the Caucasus. And I think he likes the people from the eastern area called Kakheti near the border to Azerbaijan ... There are a persian influence. Kakheti is the eastern part of Georgia.

Some people explained me sometimes in Tbilisi about the difference between western part and eastern part of Georgia ... before the war 2008 when the russian army almost separated Georia in two parts near Gori ...