“With the photographs of Alban Kakulya, we believe we have found an approach for illustrating environment and security in a meaningful way. His watchful, respectful, and above all, graceful images reveal a land at once contemporary and ancient, transparent yet mysterious.”
Otto Simonett, Director of Zoï Environment Network

Foto8 and Zoï Environment Network are pleased to announce the publication of Taking Land, a monograph of work from photographer Alban Kakulya. The result of a commission from the Environment and Security Initiative, Kakulya’s images tell the story of a Crimea coming to terms with its past while asserting its own individual and unique identity. Kakulya looks in particular at the Tatars, an ethnic minority deported by Stalin in 1944 who have now returned to their homeland to take back their land. In Nikita, an unofficial Tatar settlement, he encounters a small community slowly staking claim to land that was once theirs, and patiently guarding the stones that will one day build their cherished mosque.

Zoï Environment Network is an international non-profit organisation whose mission is to reveal, explain and communicate connections between the environment and society.

Taking Land is available from the Foto8 shop.

Taking Land: Crimea 2010
84 pages, 28 colour photographs
Introduction by Otto Simonett, essay by Alban Kakulya (in English and French)
Hardback, Cloth-Bound
ISBN: 978-0-9559580-6-9
£24.99
Published by Foto8, January 2011