My Georgian friends in Athens always said to me: “Why don’t you visit Georgia? There are so many things you can see there”. So, in the summer of 2018, I visited Kutaisi for the first time. Their relatives offered to host me for some days. Until now, I consider my trip to Georgia as one of the most meaningful and interesting trips I’ve ever made.
In a way, the photographs explore the places where my friends were born and raised and the people they left behind. As I found out, Imereti (the region where Kutaisi belongs) has the highest emigration rate in Georgia, particularly to Greece. Georgian women come to Greece to work mainly as domestic workers: cleaning, childcare, taking care of the old or sick. Usually, older women migrants send money back home to support the families of their children. Younger immigrants either consider the possibility of buying a house in Georgia to settle down after their return or, if they already have a family of their own, they support their children.
Makhvala’s household was the first I visited. She lived alone. She only spoke Georgian, which I don’t, so we were a funny duet together.
I saw old pictures of my friend Nino as a child and spent some time in the house and the neighborhood she lived in.
Lela and her husband used to live and work in Crete, Greece.
I visited Madlen. She worked as a domestic worker in Athens and managed to return. We met at her new apartment in Kutaisi. She had been a journalist for many years before the Russo - Georgian war in 2008. We visited many places in Kutaisi and had the chance, due to her social network, to talk with several people about Georgian migration.
I also met Miranda, Madlen’s sister, who also migrated to Greece to work as a domestic worker, like their mother did.
Makhvala organised a short trip to her village, in the outskirts of Kutaisi. With her daughter Bela, we paid a visit to an old chapel and a graveyard where Makhvala’s mother was buried.
Natalia lived with her mother in a village in the Kobuleti region, near the Black Sea. Natalia manufactured homemade vodka, which is sold in the local market.
Bela’s son, one of my last portraits in Kutaisi.
Before I left, together with Madlen we saw Kutaisi from above and I tried not to be sentimental about it. The b/w photograph of Kutaisi could be a souvenir card postal I took with me.