Internet users raise over 7500 US dollars on multimedia project about Grozny

For more than two years, photojournalists Olga Kravets, Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko have been making photos of the capital of Chechnya; their works are forming the multimedia project "Grozny: Nine Cities". To have the project finished, a fundraising campaign was launched on the Internet.

It is planned that the project results will be presented in the form of several essays, materials to be posted on the Internet and printed media, a web documentary and a book.

The project of photographers Maria Morina, Olga Kravets and Oksana Yushko was inspired by the book of Thornton Wilder "Theophilus North", which proposes the idea of "nine cities" as nine layers of one and the same city, says the project of the "Lenta.Ru" named "A Nonexistent Country".

The authors of the project have defined nine major topics; in their works the modern Grozny is presented as "A Nonexistent City", "War City", "City of Religion", "City of Women", "City of Men", "City of People's Servants", "City of Oil", "City of Strangers" and "City of Ordinary People".

The progress on the project "Grozny: Nine Cities" can be followed on the website Groznyninecities.com.

"For the last two years we had several exhibitions and received several awards, but at the same time everything is built on our enthusiasm, because almost nobody in the world is interested in covering Chechnya - especially, as it really looks," the authors of the project say. "That is why we started a fundraising campaign for the project."

The authors have set a goal to raise 7500 US dollars to fund their next trip to Grozny. The fundraising is performed on the website Emphas.is, where photojournalists can address the audience directly, and any interested person can take part in the campaign.

To date, according to the counter available on the website, the necessary sum is already raised - at the moment the project has received 7560 US dollars from 66 donators.

"Now we have a great responsibility," the authors of the project write. "We have to finish the project. We must be in Chechnya on the election day, on March 4, so as to be there to witness the return of Vladimir Putin, who is in charge of the second war in Chechnya."