Location: ABKHAZIA

There is an old legend the Abkhaz people like to tell the visitors: when God gave each nation its place under the sun, the Abkhaz was too busy taking care of his guests so he came in late and there was no land left for him. But God remembered the great hospitality of the Abkhaz, so he gifted him the only place left where God himself wanted to live – the small region on the shores of the Black Sea.

Unfortunately, the real-life is only a distorted reflection of this legend. Abkhazia, once one of the most beloved touristic regions of the Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union, is really a lost place on the world map. Officially a part of Georgia, separated after the civil war of 1992, it’s a state recognized only by Russia and just a couple of other countries.

The small stripe of land between the sea and mighty mountains of the Caucasus, only a fifth of the size of the Netherlands, is long forgotten by the global media circus as well as by international politics. Without any real industry, infrastructure, education, it survives on nostalgic tourism from ex-USSR citizens, foreign Abkhaz diaspora, and scarce Russian alimony.

The story “Abkhazia” is a portrait of the region that is caught in a two-decade-long sleep without any signs of waking up in sight. It researches the everyday life of people who try to exist within this uncertainty, within a system that doesn’t have a future and doesn’t seek one.

ABOUT KSENIA KULESHOVA

Ksenia Kuleshova is a photojournalist and documentary photographer based in Germany and Belgium.

She has been featured in the British Journal of Photography as one of thirty-one women to watch (2018), as one of twenty rising women photojournalists by Artsy (2019), and as one of The 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch (2022).

She was the recipient of the 2020 W. Eugene Smith Student Grant and a participant in the 2018 Joop Swart Masterclass.

Her work has been exhibited and published internationally, including in The New York Times, National Geographic, Wall Street Journal, DIE ZEIT, The Washington Post, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, FOCUS Magazine, GEO France, New Statesman, De Standaard, and she is the author of Ordinary People (The New Press, published in December 2023).