Ksenia Ivanova

Photographer
 The Land of Soul by Ksenia Ivanova   
The Land of Soul
Location: Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Biography:        Ksenia Ivanova is a documentary photographer from Russia, based in Saint-Petersburg. Her projects were published in 6Mois, Der Spiegel, The Washington Post etc. Ksenia collaborates with The New York Times, The Wall... MORE
Public Story
The Land of Soul
Copyright Ksenia Ivanova 2024
Date of Work Apr 2019 - Ongoing
Updated Jan 2022
Topics Civil Wars, Community, Conflict, Documentary, Landscape, Personal Projects, Photography, Photojournalism, Travel

The Land of Soul looks at the life in the mountain mining villages of the Tkuarchal region of Abkhazia, once thriving, but never fully recovered after the siege during the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz war. This is an exploration of the post-war trauma, a search for the traces of war imprinted in people’s bodies and in the façades of the surviving buildings. 

The images of the semi-deserted places become a metaphor for the country itself: Abkhazia—The Land of Soul—still remains a ghost state on the world map. Its autonomy is recognized by a handful of countries, including Russia, on which Abkhazia is economically and politically dependent. The trauma of war, the search for the identity during the post-Soviet era, the complex relations between nature and urban spaces—all this continues to define its current context.

Longing for a lost past and an uncertain future is correlated here with the painstaking work to maintain a space for life among the ruins. The traces of war permeate it and the subtropical forest seeks to completely absorb it, but as long as people for various reasons have not left their homes, it will be something more than just a spot on the map, frozen in tension of the conflict which is stopped but not resolved.


This project is ongoing
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