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Tbilisi diaries

Tbilisi diaries
  Georgia

Georgia has been my personal goal since last summer: instigated me to wait in lines and get angry a lot to obtain a foreign passport. Crashing servers and long queues were turning my life into bureaucratic nightmare. Over and over again.

Georgia, Tbilisi – December 2019

We have departed Russia in winter. The air border was blocked due to a political turmoil, so we had to set our way in through Vladikavkaz. We bought the cheapest plane tickets and packed up our bags with everything we needed; I pocketed three film rolls into my sweatshirt.

The entire way to the capital was like a dream. The sound of an engine in the white mist cocoon occasionally touched black silhouettes of cows grazing near the roadway and mongrels wandering along the shoulders.

I can only imagine what part of the mountain is hidden in the fog.

We couldn’t fall asleep from tiredness that night.

This is a personal story amid landscapes of a new, unfamiliar country, neither a tourism handbook nor a travel blog article. I had only one task – to take pictures of whatever I want whether these are hackneyed views or a hostel bed. To let things fly before my eyes tired of Saint Petersburg’s yellow lights as well as of the streets made as though from wax.

It feels remarkably calm here at the nighttime, after wild Petersburg and living near Dumskaya street. I’m still a little worried, but not that much as at home. I don’t even understand what locals are talking to each other: anything might happen, but there’s nothing here that concerns me. I’m going to miss that feeling.
It’s quiet here. I’ve not decided for myself yet: very or too.
The spirit of modern Georgia is burnt into the walls like a soot.
It’s hard to take a picture of someone from locals; their brown skin and dark clothes ignore the bumps of shutter. I didn’t remember anything but the features such as beautiful nose bend, hazel eyes and curly dark hair.
There are lots of Russian obscenities and tattooed arms in the spacious cafe. Here’s just like in St. Petersburg — almost familiar people ask me what would I take for breakfast; Soviet albums with black-and-white paintings of Renaissance period have occupied all the windowsills. A large fish named Bratan swims in a little bit larger aquarium. I’m sorry and I do not care. But more sorry.
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Artem Utrov

Artem Utrov is both film and digital photographer; he was born in 1997 in Samara, Russia, now living and studying in Saint-Petersburg. He works… More »

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