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In 2013, president Mikheil Saakashvili was ousted and all his personal projects of accelerated change in Georgia were put on hold. Facade-like modernization covered the greatest number of political prisoners in entire post-soviet region. The series of images traces the abandoned dream of a man with almost unlimited power in his country. At the photo: Gori, Georgia, 2013 After the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, one hundred and twenty-eight thousand Georgians were forced to leave South Ossetia, which had become a puppet state dependent on Russia. Some of them found shelter in a long-term refugee camp on the outskirts of the city of Gori. On a clear day, the buildings of the Ossetian village they were expelled from can be seen from the camp.
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Batumi, Georgia, 2013 One of the interiors of the Alphabetic Tower. In 2013, the Rustavi 2 Broadcasting Company, which supported the then president of Georgia, Micheil Saakashvili, had a television studio there. That same year, Saakashvili’s party lost the parliamentary election and the former president was formally accused of appropriating government funds. The Rustavi 2 editorial department was deserted overnight, becoming a giant trap for birds. Dozens of rock sparrows flew into it through a small opening in the wall. Once they were trapped inside, a combination of heat and starvation killed them.
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Batumi, Georgia, 2013 Police officers guarding the entrance to the Alphabetic Tower.
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Lazika, Georgia, 2013 The colourful wall of a children’s camp. Lazika is a ‘city-cum-concept’ conceived by Micheil Saakashvili. The original plan provided for the construction of a large, modern resort and port on the Black Sea. To date, all that has been built is the town hall, an approach road and a holiday camp for children and young people. Construction work was stopped in 2012. The camp is situated a few hundred metres from the border with Abkhazia and a modern local legend has it that it was intended minimise the chance of shots or an attack from the neighbouring country, which is supported by Russia. The Georgian- Abkhaz War ended more than twenty years ago, but tensions between the two states still run high.
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Anaklia, Georgia, 2013 An unfinished viewing tower. In 2011, President Micheil Saakashvili visited Anaklia, a village located on the Black Sea. He conferred town rights on it and announced the beginning of an ambitious development programme which would transform it into a luxury resort. Resplendent with lavish glamour, Anaklia was intended both to become the new authorities’ political flagship and to compensate for the nearby city of Sukhumi, which was lost during the Georgian-Russian-Abkhazian conflict of the early nineteen nineties. Construction work began in 2012. After Saakashvili’s party was defeated in the parliamentary election of 2013 and Saakashvili himself fled the country, the work was discontinued and the colossal building site rapidly transformed into crumbling ‘modern’ ruins.
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Anaklia, Georgia, 2013 Display panels with visualisations of planned, but never accomplished, development projects, discarded under a terrace of the unfinished amphitheatre.
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Tbilisi, Georgia 2013 Aleko (22 years old), the chairman of Saakashvili’s United National Movement. Previously an employee of the KGB. Aleko claims that the President’s only fault was that he chose to be surrounded by people other than himself.
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Tbilisi, Georgia 2013
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Batumi, Georgia 2013
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Batumi, Georgia 2013. The 18th floor of the so called Batumi Tower, President Saakashvili initiated numerous spectacular building projects which were supposed to permanently change the landscape of Georgian cities. The construction of this 200 metre high, hastily erected building was the site of numerous accidents. The workers marked the place of their colleague’s death with a cross.
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Mscheta, Georgia
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