Woman's Happiness

ქალური ბედნიერება / Woman’s happiness

This whole project is related to my own life, making it very personal and intimate.

From my own experience I am sure that if you stop a random georgian woman in the street and ask her - what is woman’s happiness for you? You will get most cliché answer - “woman needs a good husband and kids to be happy, this is what we are born for”. Seems that society has decided what happiness should be for us. Because of it, I feel the urgency to highlight those strong and independent women around me.

This project is about them, is about us. My idea is to show how the image of typical Caucasian woman has changed through time, how stereotypes are falling apart and finally women can express themselves and build their career, choose to be single or childfree, in love and not married and be totally happy, because it’s our choice. That’s why all participants of the project are +/-30 years old, they were born and raised in Georgia, they don’t have kids or family. Most of them do the job they love, some have their own business, some invest most of their time in studying and improving their skills. And all of them are happy with their life.

I choose age 30-ies women because it’s my generation and I know exactly what is the background and difficulties we went through. As we were born at the dusk of Soviet era - we had more freedom than our moms or grandmas, but are still dealing with their heritage. Our generation is on the edge of old and new.

By these series I want young Georgian women, and not only Georgian, to read and hear stories of all of us and feel more confident and brave in making decisions about their own life. These stories are supposed to show how strong and free we are, and we deserve to live our own life, make our own choices, not the life patriarchal society wants us to have.

Slideshow was produced in the frame of the Multimedia Lab Production Grant Program for South Caucasus Female Photographers May-October 2020 mentored by Grégoire Eloy/Tendance Floue. Multimedia Lab aims to support the professional strengthening of emerging women photographers of the South Caucasus region that cover social issues in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and use the medium of photography as the powerful tool of storytelling. The project was financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).