Jann Wilken – Lada Niva Lada Nova

Two rolls of film for two days: In June 2014, photographer Jann Wilkens left on a twelve day trip to Georgia to do a reportage. After ten days, however, he had already completed the project. Normally, Wilken is not particularly concerned with cars, but on the streets of the capital Tiflis he found sudden inspiration.

Despite a certain amount of investment over recent years, the streets of Tiflis are either in bad or very bad condition. The roads are often blocked, with traffic jams defining the city’s image. Because the town centre lies lower than all the outer districts, the pollution in the air there is particularly heavy. In recent times, the city’s administrators have been making an effort to cut down on the high number of small buses and taxis, hoping to reduce the traffic jams – but so far to no avail. “A German doctor once said that foreign patients today showing excessively high levels of lead in their bodies either came from Beijing or from Tiflis,” Wilken remembers.