Natela Grigalashvili, Georgia Unseen

The Tbilisi Public Art Fund is pleased to present Miriam Grigalashvili’s project proposal, “Natela Grigalashvili – Georgia Unseen.”

Natela Grigalashvili is one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary Georgian photography. She creates a visual world where time seems to stand still, and everyday life unfolds as something magical, dreamlike, and parallel to reality. A self-taught photographer, she mainly focuses her lens on different regions of Georgia. With exceptional sensitivity and delicacy, she captures the daily lives, traditions, and customs of local communities. At the same time—almost unintentionally—she becomes a chronicler of the profound socio-cultural transformations taking place.

Her photographs convey both documentary precision and poetic intuition — Grigalashvili never seeks to aestheticize reality, yet the moments she captures possess an unmistakable beauty and a sense of enchantment. Her camera records not only events but also reveals the inner worlds of people and their deep connection with their surroundings.

The artist is deeply committed to documenting traditions and ways of life that are rapidly changing and disappearing without a trace. To this end, she tirelessly travels through Georgia’s mountainous regions, often returning to the same places time and again. She particularly enjoys working in Mountainous Adjara and Samtskhe-Javakheti. With genuine curiosity, she immerses herself in the customs and habits of different communities, forming such close relationships with locals that they come to fully trust her camera. Every photograph carries its own story, and the artist feels a special bond with each one — perhaps it is precisely this gaze, filled with care and affection, that defines Natela Grigalashvili’s signature style.

“The selected photographs were taken across Georgia’s regions — in villages, mountains, along roads, in courtyards, and inside homes. They are not merely visual documentation, but explorations of the relationship between people and their environment, the continuation and transformation of traditions, and the coexistence of past and present. This is the everyday beauty of Georgia — the kind that may never appear in a tourist brochure, but which reveals the country’s true face,” — Natela Grigalashvili.

A particularly striking contrast emerges when Natela Grigalashvili’s photographs occupy the billboards of Tbilisi — spaces usually reserved for commercial advertising. Amid the city’s urban chaos and noise, her captured boundless horizons offer a moment of pause, a breath of stillness inviting reflection on what truly matters. The images dispersed throughout Tbilisi’s streets — taken in different regions and at different times — together form a kind of retrospective of the artist’s work. Although the photographs may seem unrelated, each dedicated to distinct stories and characters, they ultimately weave into a single narrative.

“On one hand, it refers to the visible — what we perceive with our eyes. On the other, it speaks to the invisible — the beauty that often goes unnoticed in our daily lives. Here, photography plays a transformative role, turning the unseen into the visible, into something to contemplate and understand,” — Natela Grigalashvili.

Natela Grigalashvili (b. 1965, Georgia) is a self-taught documentary photographer. Her lens primarily focuses on various regions of Georgia. With remarkable sensitivity and delicacy, she captures the everyday lives, traditions, and customs of local communities. At the same time, she unintentionally becomes a chronicler of the profound social and cultural transformations taking place around her.

Grigalashvili’s work has been exhibited both in Georgia and abroad. She is a recipient of the Alexander Roinishvili Prize, and in 2023 she was listed among the finalists of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Her photographs have been published in such outlets as The New York Times, National Geographic, Der Spiegel, Stern, and others.