Commissioned Judge, Eliseo Barbàra on winner of RPS Grant

02/05/2013

Our very first grantee for the Reminders Photography Stronghold Wall Grant is to be awarded to Armenian photographer Diana Markosian. Here is a note from one of our commissioned judges, Eliseo Barbàra, managing director and founder of MoST Artists.

©DIANA MARKOSIAN / REPORTAGE BY GETTY IMAGES EMERGING TALENT

DIANA MARKOSIAN

Goodbye My Chechnya

Around 500 years ago, Islam arrived in North Caucasus, but this religion and its traditions – the same destiny for other religions too – had been repressed during the Tzarist era and then by the Russian Communism. Today Chechnya is a federal republic that wants and needs to show off what before it was banned and forced to be hidden. A growing Islamic identity is what now Chechnya is. Traditions and restrictions from the Muslim culture have become ordinary in the country dailylife. Its traditions are imposed by the new ruling class, both political and religious, endorsed by the young Chechen Republic President, Ramzan Kadyrov. But the success of the strenghten of the Muslim traditions has also other supporters, like a young girl called Seda Makhagieva.

Seda, 15 years old, has fought many times against her parents because she would to wear the hijab, breaking from her family’s and Chechen’s tradition. As Seda, part of the Cechen youth is quickly embracing Islam and its social rules as one of the consequences of decades of religious repression in the Soviet Union. But another part of the youth is fighting against the news Islamic codes.

In a new contry as Chechnya, the sudden rebuilding of a religious system could be the cause of other problems, such as the few rights of the women. Diana Markosian decided to investigate it, but first she has been involved the situation and then she documented it. She met young girls who, even if in their innocence ages, have chosen to follow the Islam rules, but she met also those many Muslim girls who have experienced assaults, verbal and physical, losing that innocence through bridal kidnapping or forced marriage.

Diana Markosian has revealed, with respect and love, an intimate and tragic world lived by young women who are passing from the childhood to the maturity. A passage often forced and anguishing. The final result is an essential window on this world that has not be forgotten. It’s a window – that is also a repetive subject in the photographer’s images – built by Diana Markosian risking many times during her work, she was followed by federal security forces, detained several times and then many images are been deleted. It must to be inacceptable.

The window that Diana opened has to be opened.

The windows that the girls who she met have in front of them should seep a shiny light of recovered innocence and new freedom.

Eliseo Barbàra