24022022

The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine forced the Potsdam based photographer Frank Gaudlitz to add a new chapter to his long-term project on the development of post-Soviet Russian society, which he has been following since 1988. In 2022/23, he travelled to the former Soviet republics of Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, which were aff ected by large refugee movements and now offer refuge to Ukrainians and Russians alike as independent nations. Gaudlitz portrayed people there who had to, or wanted to, leave their homeland with an uncertain future.

He also asked them about their fates and hopes. The intensive portraits and conversations are processed into an impressive document of this time/chronicle in this book. The emphatic, true-to-life photographs tell of improvisation as a permanent condition, the discrepancy between social promises and the everyday reality of refugees in times of war.