Davide Monteleone’s series Spasibo depicts the perplexing political reality in Chechnya, a Russian republic bordering the Caucasus Mountains and plagued with a complex history of conflict. For more than two centuries, the predominantly Muslim Chechens have struggled to assert independence. They have in turn endured mass deportation under Stalin; prolonged civil war between separatists and Russia, as well as with local Moscow-backed authorities; organized crime; and abuses of religious and civil rights. Monteleone’s outspoken authorship of these photographs entails considerable personal risk. His ability to document this subject without arriving at clichés of violence and oppression is a considerable achievement.

Judiciously edited, Spasibo comprises studied representations of the Chechen context. Portraits and tableaux coincide with landscapes and objects photographed as if for an archive. These varied photographic strategies share common formal threads: a muted gray pervades the series, and each image is purposefully and resolutely composed. By linking disparate images—a reproduction of the Chechen constitution and a portrait of the devout praying toward Mecca; the mountain refuge of separatist rebels and a plate bearing the portrait of Putin-approved Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, himself a reformed ex-rebel—Monteleone conveys the disconcerting normalcy that reigns in Chechnya following the intense trauma of its recent past.

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