Zaeta

Jonathan Moore’s 2019 photo essay Zaeta is the story of a community of refugees living in the remains of a world that ended decades ago. In the early 1990s a conflict in Abkhazia – a disputed territory on the western edge of Georgia – caused around 200,000 people to be displaced. Around 10,000 of them were placed in the remains of an extravagant network of
hotels built by Stalin as a symbol of Soviet prosperity, at a time when citizens were required to take enforced rest.

Nearly 30 years later, several hundred refugees remain, and the hotels have become a permanent home to multipple generations. Amid these crumbling remnants of once decadent surroundings from another time, the refugees have built their lives in a post-apocalyptic environment despite their struggle for basic necessities.