{"id":68415,"date":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-students-exhibit-disputes-media-stereotypes-of-republic-of-georgia\/"},"modified":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","slug":"uri-students-exhibit-disputes-media-stereotypes-of-republic-of-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2005\/02\/uri-students-exhibit-disputes-media-stereotypes-of-republic-of-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 student\u2019s exhibit disputes media stereotypes of Republic of Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. — February 8, 2005 — Don\u2019t believe everything you read or see about the Republic of Georgia, a land of 5.5 million people living in an area roughly the combined size of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. <\/p>\n


\nThe country, which borders Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, gained its independence in 1991 and remains in transition, according to 溏心vlog免费B站 student Lisa Lahr.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe media portrays the country in one of three ways: filled with churches, political upheaval, or beleaguered war orphans,\u201d says Lahr, a Middletown resident who has visited the former Soviet republic three times with a camera in hand during the last six years, circling the country from Tbilisi to Batumi, and shooting more than 3,000 images of Georgians at work and at play. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI wanted to go beyond the headlines, beyond the CNNs,\u201d says the 41-year-old student who selected 40 of those images, some black and white, others in color, for an exhibit at 溏心vlog免费B站. The images best represent the Georgian culture Lahr discovered and admires. <\/p>\n


\nThe exhibit, \u201cUnfettered Georgia: An Exhibition of Images of a Former Soviet Republic,\u201d will be on display until May 30 on the second floor of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Lippitt Hall, the home of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Honors Program. The exhibit is free and open to the public. A lecture by the artist is planned on March 30 at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n


\n\tLahr spent last August in Georgia, the trip supported by a $4,750 fellowship from the Michael J. Metcalf Memorial Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation. This time she stayed at a farmhouse in the small village of Khissishevi, Georgia and employed a teen-ager as an interpreter. Like most Georgians she has encountered, Lahr found her hosts warm and friendly. \u201cEverywhere I traveled in Georgia, people always wanted to take me in and feed me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n


\n\tLike many farmhouses, this one had a vineyard. More than 400 varieties of grapes are cultivated in Georgia, which is known for its winemaking.<\/p>\n


\nSince her first trip, Lahr has been particularly taken with the Roma, or gypsies, whose very existence is ignored and whose culture isn\u2019t catalogued. <\/p>\n


\nRoma appear in many of Lahr\u2019s images. The 溏心vlog免费B站 student captured 10-year-old Sveta Aliev, standing outside a bank, waiting to put her hand out for money as customers exited. She scowls at the camera, displeased to be distracted from her \u201cwork.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cRoma children do not receive a formal education. A fraction of them do go to school, for how long\u2014no one knows,\u201d says Lahr. \u201cSveta, for example, speaks Russian, Romani, Georgian, and some English. I wish I could have taken her home.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe Georgians take great pride in their craftsmanship,\u201d says Lahr who captured some of those images. \u201cTheir cutlery, in particular, is (second to none??.) I would have loved to bring home one of their ceremonial knives, but it\u2019s off limits in the age of homeland security, understandably so.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWhile Lahr concedes there are problems in Georgia\u2014health care for the poor, for example, is rudimentary. Communicable diseases are commonplace and vaccinations are non-existent. The problem isn\u2019t on the world\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n


\nBut there is so much more to Georgia. Lahr points to one of her photos, a farmer\u2019s market in Tbilisi. \u201cThe people are peaceful and friendly. There are no soldiers, no guns, no constant upheaval,\u201d she says. \u201cThe city is no more dangerous than New York City.\u201d\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. — February 8, 2005 — Don\u2019t believe everything you read or see about the Republic of Georgia, a land of 5.5 million people living in an area roughly the combined size of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The country, which borders Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, gained its independence in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}