Introducing the 2021 Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship Shortlist: Biayna Mahari, Tako Robakidze and Mouneb Taim.
From left to right: Biayna Mahari, Tako Robakidze and Mouneb Taim.
NOOR, a lens-based cultural institution, and the NOOR Foundation, a non-profit committed to social change through documentary practice, supports the craft and professional aspirations of underrepresented photojournalists whose creative work echoes the commitment and passion with which Stanley approached photography. The 2021 shortlisted candidates for the Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship are Biayna Mahari, Tako Robakidze and Mouneb Taim.
“In my opinion, the three shortlisted photographers each represent the courageous dedication that the Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship embodies,” says jury member Thomas Dworzak. “Biayna Mahari, an emerging photographer, presented a very intimate, and at times quirky, poetic expression of a well-covered conflict in her own country. Tako Robakidze, on the other hand, concentrated relentlessly on documenting an easily forgotten conflict with an unending commitment. And, Mouneb Taim, a very young photographer, recorded his country's disintegration.”
This iteration of the fellowship focused on applicants based in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Biayna Mahari, positioned between her native country of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, draws on traditional photojournalism and metaphorical photography to investigate the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and how it intersects with personal identity both in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh; Tako Robakidze, based in Tbilisi, Georgia, explores the impact of Russia’s borderization process on Georgians; and Mouneb Taim, born in Syria and established in Turkey, focused on the Syrian conflict and the humanitarian crisis that ensued.
The 2021 Shortlisted Photographers
Biayna Mahari
Broken TV in a house where refugees from Hadrut currently live. From the project Diary of a non-war photographer. Photo © Biayna Mahari.
Project: Diary of a non-war photographer investigates the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and how it intersects with personal identity both in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. “On September 27, 2020,” Biayna Mahari writes, “I woke up to a war. I was living my life––planning to meet my friends or maybe read a book, I no longer remember––when all of a sudden, with a single news announcement, I appeared in a conflict zone.”
Since that day, there has been little semblance of the life that existed before. In an effort to understand this new reality, Biayna looked away from the frontline of the conflict, and focused on the intimate details that were shared by others, civilians, who were experiencing the same seismic upheaval. Biayna says: “It’s me standing in the yard watching Arthur burn his own house down in the village’s last hour, and me saying goodbye to the Dadivank monastery before it will be given away, and me drinking beer in the only pub in Stepanakert, talking about the war with the owner, while he cleans his gun.”
“It's me, but it is not about me. It’s about Armenians trying to survive through grief and loss, about those who took their weapons and went to protect their land, those who didn’t, those who came back home and who didn’t, about life and death, love and hate and, finally, it’s about all of us — humans, who create the wars, suffer from them, and then create them again.”
Biography: Biayna Mahari was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1989. She began freelancing as a photographer and journalist in 2009, while still a student at the Russian-Armenian University, covering cultural events and festivals, and photographing and interviewing artists like Serj Tankyan and Joe Cocker for local magazines. She has since produced projects on the country's 2018 Velvet Revolution, "La vita è bella," about being trapped in Italy during the Covid19 lockdown, and "Rethinking Quarantine," a set of portraits and interviews made through skype calls with those trapped with her in the same building for a mandatory quarantine. She has produced work for many local NGOs, as well as international organizations such as Unicef, FAO, and the UNDP. Her work has appeared in many local magazines, and in Nouvelle d'Armenie and Liberation in France and La Republica in Italy. In 2020 she was awarded a director fellowship to attend the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Tako Robakidze
Marina was a school teacher in the village Kemerti, which is now an occupied territory. After the war in 2008, she and her family settled in an IDP settlement in the village Shavshvebi. Even though people who lived in the Tskhinvali region were in constant war for 20 years, and shootings were part of their everyday life, they still never imagined leaving their houses. Shavshvebi IDP Settlement, Georgia. 2017. From the project Creeping Borders. Photo © Tako Robakidze.
Project: "For some people in my country, it is not difficult anymore to imagine going to sleep in their own country and waking up in an occupied territory." –– Tako Robakidze.
Creeping Borders shows how the Russian occupation affects peoples' daily lives in the villages along the so-called "border" and IDPs who have suffered along the way.
In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian-backed separatists in the Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region started a war to claim independence from Georgia. Up to 300,000 Georgians were displaced. These figures have only increased since the so-called "Five Day War" between Russia and Georgia in 2008, and up to 20% of Georgian territory is now under Russian occupation. Since 2011 Russian armed forces have pursued the policy of so-called "borderization," the installation of artificial barriers along the occupation line.
As the topic of Russian occupation and the shifting of de-facto borders moves deeper, more territories gather behind the barbed-wire fences, leaving the local community without land, harvest, and even residents' own houses. It divides families and communities, preventing people-to-people contact; moreover, kidnapping residents for "illegal border crossing" by Russian FSB has become almost a common practice. Since the start of the "borderization," more than 1000 people have been detained. Families across the occupation line have to deal with violations of human rights on a daily basis.
"Creeping Borders" was produced with the support of the Magnum Foundation as part of the Photography and Social Justice Fellowship. This body of work was exhibited at the 2018 Tbilisi Photo Festival.
Biography: Tako Robakidze is a documentary photographer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 2008 she got a Bachelor's degree in Law at Tbilisi State University. In conjunction with her university studies, she was enrolled in the documentary photography 'Sepia' and continued her studies for 5 years. In 2015, she received her master's degree from Caucasus University's Graduate School of Journalism. Since 2010 she has worked as a freelance photographer, cooperating with Georgian and international NGOs, covering diverse social topics.
Since 2015, she has been a member and co-founder of the documentary photo collective ERROR IMAGES. In 2017 she received the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellowship. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum Multimedia Lab Production Grant. In 2020 for her work about Georgian IDPs, she got a production grant from Goethe Institute. Her work is focused on documenting socio-political and economic conditions in Georgia and aspects of daily life, especially in regions of the country and minority groups of society.
Mouneb Taim
An aerial view of a drone showing the terrible destruction in the city of Jobar, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus. From the project Idlib - the last rebel stronghold. Photo © Mouneb Taim.
Project: After more than ten years of conflict, the Syrian regime's forces regained more than ninety percent of areas out of their control. The city of Idlib, in northern Syria, was the opposition forces' last remaining outpost, a place now embedded in the conflict and the promise of defeating the rebel forces for the final time.
Idlib - the last rebel stronghold, illustrates the struggle of civilians to bypass the war in the besieged region in northern Syria. The lives of residents are markedly different from others: there are airstrikes and bombings between government forces and the rebellion every day. There is an unnaturalness to each day, even though the conflict has taken on some semblance of normalcy to those living there: it is common to see bombs fall, watch people die, and hear the destruction of buildings.
While the truth of this war cannot be denied–– there are no winners or losers––some people are trying to resist the bitterness of this terrible war with their determination, hope, and desire to live. With the support of the Russian forces, the people in Idlib were forced to leave the area after months of violent bombing operations that caused the deaths of thousands.
Today, more than four million Syrians live in a minimal area. They are effectively human shields, threatened with death from both sides by the militant forces that control the site, the so-called Al-Nusra Front, and the Syrian government, who plan to regain that area.
Biography: Mouneb Taim, born in 2001, is a photojournalist who covers news stories focusing on social issues. Currently working as a freelance photographer for international agencies, he began his career in photojournalism in 2014 following the murder of his brother, a journalist in Syria. While in his native country, he covered life under siege in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, Idlib, and the countryside of Aleppo until early 2020 when Islamic organizations arrested him in his city for being gay. Mouneb has received several international awards for his work.
2021 Prize and Fellowship Jury
NOOR acknowledges this year’s Fellowship judges, which included a panel of experts in the visual storytelling field.
Tanya Lokshina, associate director for Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division.
Thomas Dworzak, photographer and Magnum Photos Member.
Marie Sumalla, deputy head of Le Monde photo department.
Andrei Polikanov, visual director of Takie Dela online media.
Nestan Nijaradze, co-founder and Artistic Director of Tbilisi Photo Festival.
Raisa Borshchigova, senior program officer at Urgent Action Fund.
Frank Zuidweg, Nikon Professional Services at Nikon Europe (Amsterdam).
Jean-François Camp, president of DUREV Events.
Learn more about the 2021 Fellowship jury.
NOOR additionally extends a special thanks to Nikon. The Stanley Greene Legacy Prize & Fellowship is made possible by Nikon’s sustained support.