Daro Sulakauri

After publishing her photo story “Terror Incognita,” which documented the lives of refugees escaping the war in Chechnya, Daro Sulakauri realized the impact photography can have on people’s perspectives of current events and social issues.

Focusing on issues that are considered taboo in her home country of Georgia, such as early marriages, or the cultural and community impacts of three decades of Russian occupation in sovereign Georgian territories, she creates images that offer a different understanding to viewers. Through social media, public installations, and international publishing, Sulakauri seeks to engage audiences by disrupting harmful mainstream narratives.

Background

Daro Sulakauri is a Georgian photojournalist. Using mixed media with documentary and contemporary approach, her work chronicles the social and political issues in the Caucasus. She graduated from the International Center of Photography in New York. Upon completing her studies, she returned to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia to document a hidden narrative of the Chechen conflict in an outpost of refugees which won her Young Photographers in Caucasus Award from Magnum Photos in 2009.

Her work on early marriages in Georgia was awarded the first prize by LensCulture, EU prize for journalism. She was a participant of the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass 2017 and Reuters Photojournalism grantee. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Forbes, Der Spiegel, Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Die Zeit, among others. She currently lives and works in Georgia.

Website: darosulakauri.com
Instagram: @darosulakauri
Twitter: @darosulakauri

Project Proposal

Aggression, authoritarianism, and modern-day imperialism pose an existential threat to communities, cultures, and entire nations —including my own Republic of Georgia. I propose to pursue ongoing photographic work, exploring the cultural and community impacts of three decades of Russian occupation in sovereign Georgian territories. Through this work, I strive to provide impactful documentation of local populations struggling to survive sustained aggression from their neighbors, even in this 21st century. Without effective leadership here, there may be no exit from this particular “forgotten circle” of hell … the debilitating fear and vulnerability of “creeping borders” and protracted unlawful annexation.

Imagine waking up one morning to find out that your bedroom is now located in a different country. Literally. While your living room and kitchen are still in the country where you fell asleep, overnight the border has been unofficially redrawn by the occupying forces from a hostile northern neighbor. Such nightmarish vulnerability has been horribly real for thousands in the South Ossetia region, a part of my homeland in the country of Georgia. Russian occupation and the occupiers’ shifting of so-called administrative “borders”in South Ossetia continues daily to encroach on Georgian territory. No one really knows where the line is, it is so mutable, and in many places it remains completely unmarked.

I aim to create visual map and archive containing images, videos, stories written by local residents. With the help of the CatchLight community, I want to expand my project and pursue ongoing documentation of this ominous change process. Having reported on the impacts of the ongoing war in Ukraine, I feel like nothing is impossible anymore regarding the seemingly limitless boundaries of Putin’s aggression.