The pictures I am submitting are part of my current project “The Invisible Border”. At the foot of the Caucasus, only a few miles north of Stalin‘s hometown Gori, the small Georgian village Mejvriskhevi can be found. Nowadays, it can only be entered from the south. The reason for this is the region behind: a territory called South Ossetia which was the scene of a military conflict between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. As a result, South Ossetia, which according to international law is part of Georgia, has become almost completely isolated from the rest of the country.
The Russian military is occupying this disputed territory until today. Even though Mejvriskhevi used to be an accessible and central place until the escalation of this conflict, it is now central only to the border zone. The so-called Administrative Boundary Line which separates Georgia from South Ossetia cuts off Mejvriskhevi by east and north. Although you wouldn’t find fencing and barbed wire here, you can not pass the border from either side. As a result, Mejvriskhevi’s relationship to its former neighbors in the area now occupied, has almost completely ceased to exist.
Friends and families have a hard time keeping in touch with their loved ones who they have been separated from. Keeping up relationships and maintaining friendships has become extremely difficult and it seems merely impossible under these severe conditions. In spite of all that, life has to go on: children attend school and during the summer they spend their free time by the river or on the grounds of the local sports field. You can see the elderly gathered by the roadside exchanging stories, cowherds tend their livestock and nearly every basement of the village is home to the traditional Georgian winemaking.
Despite international efforts, an improvement of the situation along the borderline is still not in sight. But the people like here in Mejvriskhevi try their best to pursue a normal life under unusual circumstances.
About:
I am a 29-year-old photographer from Weimar, Germany. I have a great sense of curiosity for how other people live. I am especially interested in the lives of those, who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances without receiving much attention. For my work, I spend as much time as possible with my protagonists and always try to become a part of their lives – at least for a while. Although I consider myself to be a documentary photographer, I am always subjective and my pictures are a testimony to my sympathy for the portrayed people. I worked in the film industry before commencing my photography study at the Neue Schule Für Fotografie Berlin, where I graduated in 2015. Since then I have been working on several long- term projects, the current one taking place in the small Caucasian republic of Georgia.
