Tako Robakidze

Tako Robakidze is a documentary photographer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds degrees in law from Tbilisi State University and journalism from Caucasus University, and studied documentary photography at the Sepia School. Since 2014, she has worked as a freelance photographer in Georgia, with a particular focus on war, displacement, and the Russian occupation. Robakidze is a National Geographic Explorer and the recipient of several international fellowships and awards, including the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellowship, the Stanley Greene Legacy Prize, the VII Academy Fellowship, and the Alexia Award of Excellence.

In her project Peacekeepers, Robakidze documents the complex and evolving consequences of Russian occupation in Georgia. It unites the human stories of people living near shifting borders and internally displaced persons (IDPs), while examining the cultural, political, and psychological dimensions of life under occupation. Drawing on twelve years of work along the fractured edges of her country, her project confronts what is visible—arrests, fences, erased schools—with what remains invisible: the slow suffocation of culture and the psychological weight of propaganda. The title inverts the imperial euphemism, whereby invasions are framed as “peacekeeping,”  and reclaims the word for what people live for, and defend through their resistance. Robakidze will develop the project into a multi-sensory installation together with an experimental book.