Davide Monteleone: Spasibo

Davide Monteleone is an Italian photographer. He won World Press Photo awards in 2007, 2009, and 2011. Since 2019 Monteleone is a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow.

Chechnya – 

 “Chechnya has won, Russia has won”. Perhaps the losers are the many Chechens who chose to go into exile as a matter of honour. Those who stayed have returned to a normal life and can satisfy their basic needs after several decades of hardship. Such a “normal” life, however, requires them to make major compromises and often hold their tongues.

Today Chechnya is an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation, subdued and pacified by force after centuries of rebellion against Moscow. Putin protégé president Ramzan Kadyrov holds absolute power and has almost limitless support from Moscow.

Davide Monteleone is well acquainted with the complex, tor- mented life of ordinary Chechens. He has crisscrossed the coun- try, stopping in cities and villages, mountains and forests. This book contains neither majestic city- or country-scapes nor blood- spattered depictions of violence. Monteleone rather shows us the otherwise invisible: the stifling atmosphere, the regnant hel- plessness and fear, the young women resigned to their fate, and the elderly, whose traditional authority has diminished in the fa- ce of Kadyrov’s brutes.

But Monteleone’s photographs also depict hope. Chechens are a mountain people who have endured wars and other atrocities for centuries, including the collective deportation to the arid Kazakh steppes and to Siberia under Stalin in 1944. They know how to re- sist, and they know when to wait. Strong by nature, they are ab- le to laugh even amidst adversity, and they sustain a birthrate that repopulates the land and replaces the dead. They know per- fectly well that this dictatorial regime will fall sooner or later, as it has in other Muslim countries.«Galia Ackerman

“Thank you Ramzan, thank you Russia” for everything. “Spasibo”

 

Documentary about Chechnya today, winner of the 4th Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award

 

Edited by Nathalie Gallon, Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award
Texts by Gala Ackermann, Masha Gessen

Hardcover, 24 x 28 cm

164 pages and 16 pages booklet 86 duotone ills.
English / French

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
ISBN 978-3-86828-466-9

Photography

Related Posts

In Confrontation With The Apparent – Swapan Parekh

India – Emaho caught up with celebrated Indian Photographer Swapan Parekh who is  widely acclaimed for having brought  the documentary ...

Jannatul Mawa: “Close Distance” – Powerful Portraits of Bangladesh Maids and Their Women Employers

Bangladesh –  Historically, domestic servants worked (only) for food and lodging in better-off homes of predominantly rural eastern Bengal. The ...

Thabiso Sekgala : Second Transition

South Africa –  ‘Second Transition’ is the series of images that I’ve photographed in the areas around the mining town ...

Joanna Kinowska on Mateusz Sarello’s Swell – ‘For watercrafts the swell is more disturbing’

Poland –  The black book. Canvas. Pressed letters. The half poetic text is in English. The  photographs are black and ...

Joao Pina: “Condor” – Exposing Secret Military Conspiracy by Six Latin American Countries

Portugal – In 2005, I was finishing my first book – Por Teu Livre Pensamento (“For your Free Thinking”) – ...

Ghosts of Genocide : Palash Krishna Mehrotra on Ziyah Gafic

Bosnia : Book Review : Quest For Identity By Palash Krishna Mehrotra By themselves, these are ordinary objects. These are objects that ...

Simon Baker : ‘Europe’s No Longer The Home Of Photography’

England – Simon Baker of Tate Modern London is the institute’s first curator of photography and international art and is ...

Sanne De Wilde: The Dwarf Empire

China – 小人国 在中国云南、在昆明美丽的滇池湖边、在一片原始森林里,有一个由上百矮人族群组成的梦幻国度—它就是世界蝴蝶生态园·“小人国”。这里的小矮人们勤劳、善良、多才多艺、英勇无畏。他们拥有自己的国度,拥有自己的国王、自己的军队、外交部、御膳厨房和臣民 “In the Chinese province Yunnan, close to the beautiful Dianchi lake, exists a magic land in ...

Yoshinori Mizutani: Tokyo Parrots

Japan –   When I saw the hordes of parrots of several hundred birds, I was very scared, it was like, I ...