Thomas Dworzak’s Kavkaz
During the early 90s, German photographer Thomas Dworzak explored the Caucasus region examining the impact of years of brutal war
Thomas Dworzak: For several years I had tried everything possible to flee the small Bavarian town I grew up in, eventually ending up in Moscow at the age of twenty. After spending more than a year there trying, unsuccessfully, to get my act together as a photographer —studying Russian and photographing pretty much everything I came across without a specific story or clue — I discovered the Caucasus. It was love at first sight.
In the spring of 1993, I decided to try to live in Tbilisi for a few months before going to university at the end of the summer. It was in this time I began to discover the cultures of the Caucasus, without preconceptions. The hospitality of the people. The beauty of the languages. The incredibly fast changes in the post-Soviet period. The wars and conflicts, bravery and cruelty. This place of such extremes could provoke such extreme emotions. I became fascinated and overwhelmed by the region. I meant to stay for only a few months and ended up staying for several years.
It became my story, ‘The Caucasus’, and not just any story. In the years to come I would try to photograph everything and learn as much as I could about the place. Photography was my reason but also the excuse to live it, to experience and be part of the story. To be there, to be present in that place at that specific instant in history.
The intensity of the war in Chechnya and the relatively sweet life in Tbilisi were like an addiction. Not really having any other opportunities or place to go back to, it took until 1998 for me to be able to leave this place behind. To this day, everything I do afterwards seems slightly pale and distanced. Having discovered the importance of the “Caucasus Experience” in 19th century romantic Russian literature, I am finally trying to put together a book with all my pictures from these years.
In the end, Bavaria is still my home, my origins, where I come from. But the Caucasus is where I feel like I grew up and know I will always keep returning to.
Shop rare copies of Kavkaz in the Magnum Store.
“This is a toast to the Caucasus, and through the Caucasus to Georgia. This place, at a very young age, has taught me about life – in the horrors of war – in the beauty of peace. A toast to all its people, regardless of their nationality and traditions. May God give them peace. I would like to thank you for your hospitality, and thank you for having allowed me to be part of your lives, culture and reality. Thank you for having taken me for what I am and as one of yours, allowed me to live alongside with you, in passion and obsession. Thank you for the everlasting friendship. Thank God that I had the luck to find you and your land. Meeting you was the most beautiful thing that could have happened in my life. Forever I will be proud to be a Prisoner of the Caucasus. For You!”
Irreversibly a ‘Prisoner of the Caucasus’, Thomas Dworzak assembles his nostalgic black-and-white photographs and quotes from Russian 19th-century romantic literature. The book, Kavkaz (Caucasus), is bilingual English/Russian and also contains Azeri and Georgian captions.
Shop rare copies of Kavkaz in the Magnum Store.
