Patrick Bienert used to explore ideas around concepts of cultures and identity grounded on the heritage of street and documentary photography. In East End of Europe, the German photographer portrays a new Georgia and his capital city, Tbilisi.

In 2014 Patrick Bienert found himself on Europe’s eastern edge, in Georgia – which for centuries has marked its border with Asia. At first, Bienert was there for leisure, but he soon learned about the country’s fractious years following the dissolution of the USSR and the ongoing political balancing act it plays between Russia and Europe. Between 2015 and 2018 he visited Georgia frequently, photographing the millennial generation that have grown up in this uncertain atmosphere.
In the three years that Bienert travelled across the small nation, once known as ‘the Italy of the Soviet Union’, taking in its food, wine, and the rich variety of its landscape, from the mountains of Svaneti to the spas and beaches of Batumi. At the same time he captured a nation of crumbling infrastructure and forgotten monuments, domed churches and wide, open steppe. But these desolate landscapes are animated by the people the photographer encountered.


“I think it’s a personal story. It’s about the people I met, and I tried to meet as many people as I could, but in the end it’s my own interpretation.”
- Patrick Bienert