US Embassy opens the ‘Georgia 1929-1933’ photo exhibition at Karvasla

On January 30 US Ambassador John Tefft, together with Georgia’s Minister of Culture Nika Rurua and General Director of the Georgian National Museum Davit Lortkipanidze opened a photo exhibition entitled ‘Georgia 1929-1933’, showcasing the works of American photographer and scientist William Osgood Field.

William Osgood Field first visited Georgia in 1929 and in the course of several visits spent many months in Svaneti. During his travels he took pictures, filmed local landscapes and people and kept a diary describing local culture and traditions. For many decades his archives were kept in the US Library of Congress and the American Geographical Society Library in Wisconsin.

The exhibition is the result of twelve years of dedicated work by Irakli Iakobashvili, a Georgian scholar from the Parliament of Georgia archives. On his initiative and with the support of the US Library of Congress, the American Geographical Society, Dr. McCollins Foundation, the X-Form Advertising Company in Tbilisi, the National Museum of Georgia and the US Embassy in Tbilisi, the images of Georgia’s past captured by this American scholar are being presented to the Georgian public.

In August 2008, the US Embassy in Tbilisi opened a similar exhibition of William Field’s photos in the Svaneti History and Ethnography Museum, a part of the Georgian National Museum.