East End of Europe
The series portrays a Georgian generation in transition between soviet heritage and western modernity looking for a closeness to Europe. The photographs were taken over the period from 2015 - 2018 in a dialogue with the younger generations about their perspectives, dreams and the daily life in the country.
Present Georgia is still shaped by the past and the conservatism of the Georgian Orthodox Church. In the patriarchal society of Georgia most women are expected to submit to the conventions.
Patrick Bienert
Patrick Bienert is a German photographer who works on long-term projects of portrait, landscape and documentary photography.
He studied photography at the Staatliche Lehranstalt für Fotografie in Munich. His photographic longterm projects are grounded on cultures and identity in relation to the history and its traces between the land and its inhabitants. He predominantly documents youth culture and transformation on the borders of Eastern Europe. Bienert has published the books Wake up Nights (2017), about young nightlife culture in Ukraine.East End of Europe (2020),about a pro-European generation in Georgia. Happy Springs (2023), about Ukrainian youth along the Dnipro River and by the sea, and Armenia (2024), reflecting fragments of collective memory and resilience. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Double Magazine, The Atlantic, M le Monde and Zeit Magazin.
