JUSTYNA MIELNIKIEWICZ was born in Poland in 1973. Graduated from Jagiellonian University in Krakow with a Masters in New Media and Culture Management. Immediately after finishing university in 1999, started to work as photojournalist in the daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2001 became a freelance photographer and moved to Tbilisi / Georgia to work on a long-term project on the South Caucasus. The project was awarded among others: honorable mention at the 2003 Dorothea Lange R. Taylor Prize and at the 2003 Santa Fe Project Competition, and received a grant from the European Culture Foundation. Since then, in addition to work on personal projects, I regularly photograph news events mainly in the Caucasus area. Recent work has appeared in: The New York Times, Paris Match, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Eurasianet.org among others. Since 2002 lives in Georgia.
Ethnic Greeks in Tsalka are descendents of refugees from Pontus who came to Georgia from present-day eastern Turkey two centuries ago. In the early 90s, like many Georgians, ethnic Greeks left the country looking for better lives and work. Majority of them went to Greece. Each year hundreds of Greeks who comes for their annual Easter visit totheir Tsalka homeland returns to an economically devastated region, much like it was when they left.
Their homes are either illegally occupied, or have been totally looted and dismantled. The 1989 Soviet census put the number of Greeks in Georgia at 100,342 (1.9%).
The 30,000 Greeks who once inhabited the Tsalka region now number approximately 1500.
© Justyna Mielnikiewicz 2006
www.justmiel.com
www.digitalrailroad.net/just73
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