Jens Olof Lasthein: Meanwhile Across the Mountain [signed]

The mountain range of Caucasus is a borderland where Europe meets Asia and Christianity meets Islam; a myriad of nationalities, languages and cultures live side by side. Well-known in the Soviet time as the land of wine and pomegranates, clean mountain air and sunny beaches, the Caucasian republics today are often separated by barbed wire and suspicion as a result of decades of wars and unresolved conflicts.

An extraordinary photographic tale about people living on both sides of the Caucasus mountain range. The book is an intimate portrait of a part of the world that is seldom mentioned or recognised and the result of years of travelling in the area. Lasthein uses his panoramic camera as a means of both being in the middle of a situation and getting a wide-angle view of the scene. His pictures are often composed of multiple interacting actions. In the Caucasus the concept of borderland gets especially vivid. Here Europe meets Asia and Islam meets Christianity; a myriad nationalities, languages and cultures live side by side. In spite of the unresolved wars and conflicts since the fall of the Soviet Union, people of the new countries and republics are still emotionally tied together by their common history. Jens Olof Lasthein’s pictures tell stories full of life from a region which is most often talked about only when bombs explode or border conflicts flare up anew.