Kontemplując gruzińską duszę

Her biggest project is the Georgian villages. By photographing them, she tells a personal story about the extraordinary inhabitants, their happiness and sorrows, traditions and rituals, work and daily life...a rich and beautiful culture in danger of disappearing.

Traveling to many hardship and poverty-stricken regions, Natela Grigalashvili has been documenting isolated communities and ethnic minorities for years - the last Georgian nomads living on the country's socially and geographically remote periphery. Georgia is her homeland. It is the place where she has spent her life and has never thought of moving to another. Even when unrest and turbulent changes began to appear in the country. Georgia has gone through 3 wars in the last 25 years, 20 percent of the country is occupied by Russia, poverty rates are on the rise, and residents fear that in an era of increasing globalization and rule by those who gained power by plundering their own country, they may lose their diversity, traditional values and national identity.

Natela Grigalashvili was born in the poor village of Tagveti, amidst wooden huts, misty valleys, rolling pastures and the breathtaking panorama of the Caucasus mountains. She grew up in a peasant family. She enjoyed this simple life, which brought naive happiness and bittersweet beauty. She left the village almost three decades ago, when she was 16. The reason was cinema and her love of movies, which she knew from old Soviet cinema magazines available in the local library. After finishing school, she went to the capital to become a documentary film operator. However, she became a photographer. In the Soviet Union during the economic crisis of the 1990s, photography was not a respected profession. There were no schools or places to upgrade skills. One worked with analogs and classic black-and-white film. There were no photojournalists, much less female photographers. The sight of Natela with a camera caused surprise and derision from neighbors or people she grew up with.

All until her works began to receive awards, were published in prestigious magazines and exhibited in major European capitals. Natela Grigalashvili's photographs are imbued with personal sadness and inexplicable romanticism. Watching them, one has the feeling as if time has stood still. Whether he is documenting the land of the orthodox Duchobors foretelling the future; the foggy village of the ethnic Kists; the extremely hard-working women of the mountainous Pankisi Gorge or the Muslim nomadic population of mountainous Adjara, each time he reveals the true face and history of the Georgian countryside. She wants to fully understand the extraordinary culture, traditions, beliefs and unique way of life that is slowly beginning to fade into oblivion. Her photography aims to hold the cultural heritage for a little longer and provide a broader picture of the country's current situation. The photos strike a delicate balance between landscape and portrait. With their aesthetics and character, they refer to pastoral themes and pastoral images, once important in Georgian art. In Natela's photographs, the distinctive misty mountainous landscape will always remind her of home. When she has some free time, she gets on a bus and travels in a direction she knows. She returns to her home village for people from her childhood memories and her mother, with whom she shares an uneasy bond.

In an attempt to shatter the wall of indifference and long-standing resentment, Natela began the extraordinarily beautiful "Book of My Mother" series about her mother. She photographed her for so long until she realized that the anger and disappointment they had lived for years no longer mattered today. She wanted the book to be a sincere story, a kind of reconciliation, a rapprochement and a tribute to a parent. However, it turned out to be a touching portrait of both of them.