A Look Beyond the Headlines: Tako Robakidze photo exhibition

Tako Robakidze’s photo exhibition at Europe House, Tbilisi, from 14-27 March 2016, is entitled A Look Beyond the Headlines. The exhibition displays over 100 framed photographs (dated 2015) of Pankisi Gorge in northeastern Georgia, at the foothills of the Great Caucasus Mountains bordering Chechnya.

Robakidze photographs the landscape, but also everyday Kists living in Duisi Village and Jokolo Village in Pankisi Gorge. Robakidze’s goal was to ‘document the dynamics of real, existing life in Pankisi Gorge’ writing that the Kists are ‘connected to the nature around them and the deeply rooted traditions of their community.’ The photographs include the miller, local women and children, and scenes of fishing, cooking, cleaning, teaching, and recreation.

Below is ‘Making Khinkali – Georgian Dumplings (2015).

My favourite is the photograph of Makvala (Badi) Margoshvili (2015), founder of the Marshua Kawkaz (Freedom in Caucasus), a Kist women’s charity foundation. She was also the first to start agro-tourism in the valley. Below is also Mari floating and dreaming in Alazani River (2015) and Nodar, the village miller (2015).

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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