Life on the Line

Tonight at the Tynedale Photography Group, our speaker was Ray Cooper. He started his talk with a collage of images that could have been taken in Ukraine today. They included a set of bombed flats just like the ones we saw on the news earlier.

Ray was in Georgia as part of a monitoring force on the line between Georgia and South Ossetia. I have copied his words from his website


"'Life along The Line' is a series of documentary photographs I took in the Republic of Georgia during my deployment to the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) from 2012 to 2015. 'The Line' is question is the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) between South Ossetia and Georgia, a ceasefire line between Russian backed South Ossetia and Georgia along the Southern Caucus Mountains. The heavily patrolled and monitored dividing line has split the very poor farming communities and individual families in this troubled region. To date, the situation shows no signs of being resolved.
 
The people on the ABL never ceased to inspire me with their resilience to the appalling situation they find themselves in made worse by the harsh environment and living conditions they endure during their day-to-day lives."


It was salutary to hear about the conditions imposed on the people in those villages. The talk was excellent, but I came away, yet again wondering about man's inhumanity to man. How do the occupying troops keep the mindset that makes the occupied suffer so much?


In other news, the most exciting thing was that we both tested negative again today. It is 5 days since Mum had contact with Covid. Phew!