Day One: Arrival in Tbilisi

Part of the series Tbilisi: Beyond the Courtyard Gate.

Day one of seven.

At first, the courtyards seemed empty.

Not abandoned. Not lifeless. Simply empty. As if people had only just been there and then disappeared, dissolving into the grapevines and the colored laundry hanging on the lines. As if they had heard my footsteps and chosen, for the moment, not to appear.

Only the cats and dogs did not hide. They stretched their necks and looked at me without blinking, as if trying to understand who I was and what I was doing there.

This was how my first photo expedition in Tbilisi began.

Behind me was a twenty-four-hour journey, two layovers, and the kind of fatigue that makes everything inside go quiet. I had arrived two days later than the rest of the group. By then, everyone had already met with the mentor, chosen a direction for their story, and most likely entered the rhythm of work.

Each day, we photographed alone. In the evening, we came together and looked through our images on a large screen. We talked. We noticed what felt true. Sometimes we stayed silent. Some photographs ask for that.

“Gamardjoba?” I said softly.

The word felt unfamiliar in my mouth. As if I were not greeting someone, but apologizing for entering. A new language always lives just outside you at first.

There was no answer.

A Tbilisi Italian courtyard often hides behind a gate or inside a dark stone passage. You step into it without knowing what waits on the other side. A vine. A pomegranate tree. Laundry moving slightly in the air. The quiet evidence of a life that does not reveal itself all at once.

So I kept walking. Looking into courtyards, arches, and narrow passages, until the city, little by little, began to look back.