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About the Project
Much is at stake — and in flux — in the Black Sea region. Memory, photography, and storytelling all have a role to play in how conflict and reconciliation are constructed. With that in mind, in February 2025 we asked the Davis Center community of students, scholars, alums, and supporters to send us original photographs taken during their travels to, or residence in, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova. We are excited to share the images and the compelling stories they tell.
The images are available via a CC BY-SA-NC 4.0 license. You are free to use and share them for non-commercial purposes so long as you credit the photographer(s).
Stay tuned for a podcast conversation with our community photographers!
Meet the Photographers
Charles Crabtree ("Echoes of Greece") is an assistant professor of government and an affiliate of the Department of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies at Dartmouth College. He is a deeply interdisciplinary scholar of discrimination. Read more about Charles.
Isabelle DeSisto ("On Duty" and "Batumi Port") is a Ph.D. candidate in politics at Princeton University. She earned both her B.A. in government (summa cum laude) and her M.A. in regional studies (Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia) from Harvard. Read more about Isabelle.
Martin Demant Frederiksen ("Batumi Relics") is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Aarhus. Among his many research topics are masculinity and forms of marginalization. He has worked extensively in Georgia. See his 2017 book "Georgian Portraits: Essays on the afterlives of a revolution." Read more about Martin.
Julian Gonzales-Poirier ("Black Sea Meets Botanical Garden") is an A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies - REECA and an Innovation Fellow for the Program on Georgian Studies in 2024-2025. His work focuses on Turkish-Iranian-Russian relations. Read more about Julian.
Svetlana Nekrasova ("Crimea in Winter") is a photographer born in Crimea. She is a creative entrepreneur supported by Mayor Muriel Bowser's "202Creates" initiative in Washington, D.C. in 2025.
Anastasiia Pereverten ("Hotel Odesa") is an A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies - REECA at Harvard University. A native of Kyiv, she earned her B.A. at the University of Wyoming and came to Cambridge to study U.S. foreign policy toward Eastern Europe as well as Ukrainian diplomacy. Read more about Anastasiia.
Jon Schubin ("Summer Before the War"). Jon lives and works in London. Read about Jon's recent experience traveling from Moldova to China.
Irina Todorova ("Veleka River Delta at Sunset") is a health psychologist. She is Clinical Professor at the Department of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. Read more about Irina. Learn about the Veleka River.
Evan Woodnorth ("Trouty Fingers") has worked and lived in Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Taylor C. Zajicek ("Stairway to Nowhere" and "Trabzon Tea Garden") is a historian of environmental change in modern Eurasia and the Middle East. He earned his PhD at Princeton and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia in 2024-2025. Read about his current book project, an environmental history of the Black Sea in the 20th century, or his piece on the environmental impact of Russia's war against Ukraine.
Frames project team: Kelly O'Neill, Olive Coles, Julian Gonzales-Poirier