EXPOSURES
EDITED BY CONOR RISCH
Do you have an interesting photography project? Contact section editor Conor Risch at
PDN, 770 Broadway, 8th floor, New York, N Y 10003 or e-mail conor.risch@nielsen.com.
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
DISPUTED
TERRITORIES
DAVIDE MONTELEONE’S NEW BOOK, Red This Tle,
EXPLORES DAILY LIFE IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS,
A REGION OF HOSPITABLE PEOPLE SCARRED BY A
HISTORY OF CONFLICT. BY CONOR RISCH
AFTER LIVING IN MOSCOW for several years, Italian photographer Davide Monteleone
became interested in the Northern Caucasus—the mountainous, geopolitically complex
region between the Caspian and Black Seas that is home to a wide range of ethnic groups,
many of them Muslim—because the culture, landscape and people were so different
from those in Slavic Russia, which controls many of the areas.
Having moved to Russia during the Second Chechen War, which was fought from
1999 to 2008, Monteleone knew about the Caucasus region and the Russian republic of
Chechnya primarily through media reports of terrorist attacks, human rights violations
and other atrocities associated with the conflicts there. “What about regular people living
there?” he wondered. “For every work that I do, I want to show the daily life of people,”
