I was in Georgia during the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 photographing the internally displaced people living there in limbo. In 2009, one year after the war, I went to Georgia again and visited the same places that I photographed one year previously.

Through a series of decidedly allegorical and metaphorical composites I am attempting to highlight the situation in Georgia as it represents itself to me now: a country still marred by the repercussions and after-effects of the war, a country more than ever torn between denied access to the west and a territorial integrity in tatters – its people being left with a broken democracy – a Georgia in limbo.

By combining the two images and collapsing them into one frame – stripping away the dimension of time and leaving the continuum of space – I am attempting to show that so much has changed and yet so little.

My aim was not to create one “seamless” composite image but one that is clearly and visibly a combined image, the photographic equivalent of a Brecht epic theatre piece, a disturbance to the viewer.

Uwe Schober
www.rupertbeagle.com