It is dark. It is dark even late in the morning, and it is already getting dark in the early afternoon. The only source of light is the snow that has accumulated over the months, while the few objects that still have the desire to stand out in front of the snow, shine in black: fences, tombstones, a few animals returning home. All the colors have been lost, only two remain, the white of death and the black of life.
At the time of this final whitening and blackening of the world, the birch branches of Lamproba, the festival of lanterns, are lit in Svaneti. On the night of February 14, when the more-than-four-month winter has been going on too long even for the living, let alone the dead. The village gathers for midnight mass in the church, a bonfire is lit in front of the church, and after the service, each lights a birch branch from it and places it at the graves of their dear dead.
Anna Kacheishvili has been traveling from the distant capital to Svaneti for the Lamproba festival since 2015. In the winter of the ninth year, she published a photo album and organized an exhibition of her pictures in the garden of the Svaneti Museum. The Mies van der Rohe-style grids of the iron stands desperately try to project some order behind the images, which speak of a completely different, mystical order. Their otherworldliness is also emphasized by the counterpoint of spring nature that, in the meantime, has sprouted behind the photos. The exhibition is titled Gilgamesh, about the man who tried to bring light to his dear friend in the underworld. He failed to bring him back, but he learned from him what death is.
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