Somewhere Else | Diaspora from Europe's Modern Dictatorships (2025-ongoing)
Since 2020, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians and Russians have fled their home countries, due to the dangerous conditions of increasing repression and autocracy. Thanks to it's quite open-door policy, Georgia serves as an uncomplicated place to flee to. Nationals of Belarus or Russia may live and work there, renewing their visa every year. However they are neither granted asylum status nor official residence. So they live there in a limbo, stuck without the option to go home. They must live somehow in the present moment.
How does it feel to be an exile? How do you live, cope and make a home or community in this temporary place, this limbo home. What challenges are faced and what unexpected positives arise from the situation?
Everyone has moved for a reason. Some are in danger of imprisonment or violence due to their actions, associations or their beliefs. Some simply can't align with the regime, or see any future there. Some don't want to be sent to a war. For most of them, returning home is not an option.
I have spent time with these exiles Georgia twice this year, hearing their stories and getting an insight into their lives and how they deal with this situation. My goal is to make photographs that both respond artistically to this and also strive to document it. For safety and privacy, I have chosen to make the subjects anonymous by not showing faces. In this way the portraits become more portraits of the subjects' situation, rather than the individual person.
