Georgian photographer Tako Robakidze is in a three-person shortlist for this year's Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship, an award designated to focus on photographers from Eastern Europe and Central Asia in its second edition.
Robakidze, known for her documentary photography including on the Creeping Borders series that grew out of her fellowship of the prominent Magnum Foundation in 2017, was picked by juries of the award alongside Armenian freelance photographer Biayna Mahari and Mouneb Taim of Syria.
The prize is organised by NOOR Foundation, which focuses on documentary photography and photojournalism and honours the legacy of American photographer Stanley Greene, who documented major geopolitical events in Europe and the Middle East over decades.
Announcing the 2021 Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship shortlist! Congratulations to @BiaynaMahari, Tako Robakidze and @mouneb_taim. Learn about their work and career here:https://t.co/kYHRPemYSS
— NOOR (@noorimages) October 21, 2021
Find details about the shortlisted photographers and their work
In my opinion, the three shortlisted photographers each represent the courageous dedication that the Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship embodies
– Thomas Dworzak, jury member for the 2021 prize
Thomas Dworzak, photographer and jury member for this year's prize, credited Robakidze with for concentrating "relentlessly on documenting an easily forgotten conflict with an unending commitment".
The Georgian participant's submission for the award - her project Creeping Borders - explores the effects of the "borderisation" process along the administrative boundary line separating Georgian-controlled territory from the country's Russian-occupied regions.
Exhibited at the 2018 Tbilisi Photo Festival, the series were also featured in a New York Times story around the borderisation process and life along the occupation line.
Robakidze graduated from the Caucasus University Graduate School of Journalism in 2015 and has been working as a freelance photographer. Since 2015, she has been a member and co-founder of the documentary photo collective Error Images, while in 2020 she received the Multimedia Lab Production Grant of the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum.