Georgia is the name of the ship that brought a certain Ljubiša Danilovic to New York in 1906, a nineteen-year old Montenegrin dreaming of a different life. A century later, in Butte, a mining town in Montana, the photographer and his namesake began a fictional conversation about exile. In 2021, Ljubiša Danilovic imagined the journey that took him from his native Montenegro to the United States, repeating a journey comparable in every way to those that thousands of migrants around the world must undertake today. In his book of the same name, Ljubiša Danilovic combines photographs of the town of Butte, of a Montenegro that offers few horizons to young adults who dream of elsewhere, of a nostalgic Montenegro – that of his childhood – of migrants he met in Paris, Calais or Sarajevo, and of others who have spent their lives far from their country of birth… With the same voice, Ljubiša Danilovic tells the small story, but also, of course, the great story of exile. “I have tried to respond in images to the emotional journey of my namesake through his experience of uprooting.“ Alternating text and photographs, black and white and colour, author’s eye and documentary work, Georgia is an imaginary epistolary relationship on the theme of exile, but also and above all a historical perspective on the phenomenon of migration.
curator Florent Basiletti
scenographer Elizabeth Guyon
partners Fujifilm, Slika Print
L’Engagement
from July 1 to September 29, 2024
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation
18 rue de la Calade
13200 Arles
