When surrounded by existential threats, survival becomes the only clear priority, and healing, planning recedes into the background. What remains is a singular, urgent instinct: to protect your home, your land, your people.
The calendar now feels heavy. Each year is marked not just by seasons, but by memories — military assaults, war, displacement. Some days, especially September, feel like a psychological minefield. Memory doesn’t rest here. It pulls you back, forces you to relive what was never truly left behind.
You learn to live with tension, but never in peace. The atmosphere stifles economic confidence, drives migration, and erodes any hope for normalcy. Peaceful life feels stolen from the South Caucasus, and peaceful coexistence seems like a distant dream. Yet, hope persists; it has not been outlawed.
Into this fractured landscape steps German photographer Jana Islinger, with quiet attention. After multiple visits to Armenia — listening, traveling, engaging — her work attempts to make visible what much of the world has overlooked. Her project, ‘It’s my wound because it’s pain for me’, offers a photographic portrait of a society shaped by trauma, shadowed by war, and held together by a complex blend of fear and resilience. Her images capture a sense of loss, pain, the weight of geopolitics, and the lives of ordinary people navigating a complex and often harsh reality. Armenia becomes visible not only as a site of conflict but as a place where longing and grief coexist — where the desire for peace survives, even when peace feels far away. (Arshaluys Barseghyan)
Armenia, 2023 - 2025
For many young women in Duisburg, their home lies along an invisible line that separates the more privileged south from the structurally disadvantaged north. Islinger portrays these women and focuses on the conditions in which they grow up.
Unter demselben Himmel shows how differently life is experienced in a city that is still influenced by this division. This boundary is barely visible in the cityscape, yet it shapes access, expectations and opportunities in everyday life. The work deliberately avoids clear-cut categorisations and addresses the unequal distribution of opportunities. It is precisely this that makes it clear that differences lie less in outward appearances than in the structures within which the young women grow up.
By linking her observations with the memories of her mother, who herself grew up in Duisburg, Islinger raises the question of the persistence of such differences and how they shape the sense of home across generations.
Duisburg, Ruhr region, 2025 - ongoing
Georgia, located at the easternmost end of Europe, is caught in the tension of a conflict between pro-Western reorientation and the historically Russian sphere of influence, which is reflected in the entire society.
Droa [„It‘s time“] is a photographic search for the identity of a country between the dream about Europe, the fear of Russia and the consequences from years of oppression.
A central role of the work is the Soviet Russian legacy and the transition from it to a - supposedly - independent system. I have accompanied people who are struggling in capitalism, lagging behind in change and finding comfort in their faith. But also those who are already born in an independent Georgia. They fight for a more self-determined life, far away from the conservative views of the older generation and demand a rapprochement with the EU. Also thematized are the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which fell into a war of secession due to Russia's influence. I have portrayed those who have lost their homeland but not the hope to return one day. Another part of my work is formed by different parties and organizations. They try to fight against domestic events and powerful elites, which are infiltrated by Russia, and want to liberalize the country.
Georgia, 2022
The Loro Borici School, in a suburb of Tirana, Albania, is the last state-run football academy since the end of communism. While most football schools have become privatized and profit-driven, often excluding talented youths from less wealthy families, Loro Borici focuses on nurturing young talent regardless of social background. In a country where football infrastructure is limited, the school offers a rare opportunity for boys to develop their skills and pursue professional careers, keeping alive the dream of playing at the highest levels in Europe.
Tirana, Albania, 2021
For ZEITmagazin, I spent over six months photographing Munich’s “Alter Botanischer Garten,” a place often labeled a crime hotspot. Together with Annabel Wahba, I got to know many people whose paths cross there.
