Muslim Women of Ajaria

Muslim Women of Ajaria is project unveils the romantic peculiarities in the lives of the Muslim women of the highland Ajara . These Georgian females bear the principal burden of their families: they raise kids, cook food and breed the cattle, work on the fields and keep their households upright. Specific to deeply traditional Muslim societies, these women are bound by the rules of veiling their faces outside their homes and in presence of non-family member males. They often marry without ever knowing or seeing their future spouses. They have no right to speak in presence of their fathers in law and their education is often limited to several years in the secondary schools. But surprisingly, they find the ways to enjoy this miserable life and these secrets are often hidden in their own love-stories.

I have chosen this topic, first to educate myself about this almost mysterious and poorly known region of Georgia. Secondly, I wanted to share my impressions about these women during the rare moments of their leisure. Bringing forth their faces, hands and love or marriage-gifts in the close-up photography reveals the precious details of their romantic experiences.

The project is about the female inhabitants of highland Ajara. People living there are Georgian Muslims, while being there I shot the women whom I found interesting to photograph, they are the main power in family while bringing up the children, breeding the cattle ad doing all sorts of housework. The women strictly follow their ancestors traditions, they never leave the house without wearing the veil, some of them got married without knowing there future husbands sometimes they are not allowed to talk while being in the same room with their fathers in law, and they hardly gain full education at schools, but despite all these they are happy with their lives.

I did this project just to find and to show the others what happens up there in these mountains to women as there are not spoiled with such attention even I hardly knew about them before my first visit up there, .but as they do not have professions or any other jobs except the housework I concentrated on their portraits, faces and expirations.