Walk with me. It may not be a pleasant little stroll but, fortunately, it will be a rather short one. The roads paved by the words that follow are not straight and you will often find yourself questioning the final goal of this essay. But if you endure and follow the strange lines of reasoning, you may come to some very interesting realizations about the nature of madness. I want you to forget everything you have ever known about insanity and start investigating its nature without any pre-defined notions. Just assume for now, as an experiment, that madness is something we invented.

This is a project about the forgiven unforeseen destiny, about stolen opportunities, giving up and getting used to fortune in exchange for finding alternative meanings of life, passion for living, for caring and love.

Four generations of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living at Tserovani reflect on their own personal challenges and perceptions.  Each photo tells a story of the struggle between the memories and reality. How did each generation find a way to get used to their new life, or do such kind of ways exist at all?     

Islam appeared in Adjara between 1510 in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the Ottoman Empire started to expand throughout the South Caucasus. As a result of spread of Islam in Adjara, Islamic traditions were introduced into local life. This photo reportage focuses on the details characterising the life of Adjarian women, as well as their traditions, culture and challenges. The photos aim to show Adjarian Muslim women of different generations, with different challenges and different views towards life.  

This is the story about a village nestled in lush forests, and its people who live cut off from the world - its residents are constantly on the move to reach the world that lies beyond the tall trees surrounding their homes.  

The devotion some elderly people feel for Joseph Stalin never really surprised me. My grandfather praised him and kept photos of the Soviet leader next to his bed. I was never brave enough to challenge him about his reverence, and many others of his age, for his former comrade. Then, last December, I travelled to Gori, the city where Stalin was born on December 18, 1878, and discovered that even people my generation, who are 20-something, share the same admiration. Now, that came as a surprise - I could not understand how people my age could gather and celebrate the birthday of a person whose ideology could not be more distant from the principles of freedom and human rights I believe in.

“Don’t cry or else someone in Georgia will find out and will start crying too,”—not the most common way to calm a crying baby. And yet this is what I witnessed on my very first day in Fereydunshahr. In this tiny city of about 14,000, tucked away in the mountains in the Western part of Iran’s Isfahan Province, mothers do not bribe kids with candy or threaten them with the boogeyman. They simply urge them to hold their tears for a faraway, small country’s sake.

“When we talk about disabilities, we tend to forget blind and visually impaired people as if they don’t exist,” laments Esma Gumberidze, a Tbilisi-based advocate for rights for the disabled. “For generations, they lived in closed communities.Now, they just stay at home.” At #202, pupils are taught to read and write in braille, the writing system of raised dots for the blind and visually impaired, as well as how to navigate spaces independently, identify objects by touch, use computers with a voice synthesizer, and cook without assistance.  

In August 2008, war between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia shattered the life of thousands -- hundreds were killed, while still more had to leave their homes and lost everything. The village of Tserovani, located about an hour north of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, was built from scratch to provide a home to those families who cannot return to South Ossetia. Many of its roughly 8,000 residents are children, who, despite their families’ past, are holding onto their dreams. Those born during or after the conflict have just the same hopes and dreams as any other child. They are doctors, dancers andsoccer players in the making. Some of them dream about traveling in space; others just imagine their future in the mountains where they can live immersed in nature.