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

Mark Power: Die Mauer ist Weg!

Germany –  By a series of fortunate events, Photography feature – Mark Power was present at the fall of the Berlin ...

Diana Matar: “Evidence” – Photographing Six years of Political Disappearance

Libya –  Years ago Photography feature –  Diana Matar‘s father-in-law, a Libyan opposition leader, was kidnapped by the Egyptian secret ...

Francois Hebel : The Arles Aesthetic

France –  Francois Hebel, one of the most influential man in photography today boasts of a prolific career, spanning 12 ...

The Lens of Persia – Abbas

‘IRAN. Shahr Rey. 1997. Four seater motorbike’ Iran – Famous for his sheer aesthetic intellect, rational sense of work and ...

Arko Datto: CYBER SEX

THIS STORY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT India –  I had started working on my project CYBERSEX during the months of March ...

Genre Straddler – Christopher Morris

‘Young Chechen, Orphan boy on Ulikemia street (Street of Peace) in downtown Grozny, 1996’ U.S.A. – Christopher Morris is an ...

Tom Hunter: Life on the Road

United Kingdom –  Life on the Road captures a remarkable moment in time, in the 1990s, when young people travelled ...

EMAHO Picks the Most Interesting Photobooks of 2014

“Just like every year, more and more photobooks were published in 2014. The importance and awareness of making a photobook ...

Daisuke Yokota Corpus

Daisuke Yokota: “Corpus” – Fictitious Mix of Nudity and Reality

Japan –  Photography feature –  Daisuke Yokota was selected for the first OUTSET UNSEEN AWARD in 2013, and his first ...