These three photographs seem to have been taken as records of Death, and the presence of a dead body in two of them is quite startling!
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-Nothing is known about [web_mikeladze_]”30” beyond the fact that the photograph is clearly a particularly early one (1880s-1890s), but the picture – in common with photograph “44” – is an interesting illustration of the fact that one of the attributes of a Batsbi man in death seems to be the presence of a horse (his horse?) in the photograph. Robert Chenciner's book on Daghestan (1997) relates that the saddled horse present at a man's funeral or memorial is a remnant of Scythian horse burials! A race would be held, the winning horse being the one most suitable to carry the deceased man's spirit to Paradise...
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(The horse is on the far right, its neck and part of its head visible against the carpet. See also this previous post.)
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-More is known about the scene in photograph “25”, as it has a detailed inscription on the back – The dead man is Ikako Utchilauri, murdered by Alexi Tsikhelishvili because he refused to lend the latter the princely sum of 3 rubles. The mourners are Ikako Utchilauri’s relatives and – somewhat surprisingly, perhaps! – relatives of Alexi Tsikhelishvili’s.
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-The third photograph – “44” – is also an image taken following a Batsbi man’s death, but has an intriguing difference: the absence of a body. Either this photograph was taken to commemorate the death – at the end of a customary period of mourning, for example – or the man’s body was never found or could not be retrieved for burial. Present are the man’s mother, wife, two children, another man – perhaps the brother of the deceased, or that of his wife – and the man’s horse, saddled and ready to go, but the protagonist himself is missing, and is represented by an outfit of clothes, including knitted socks and gloves, which has been lain out upon a “nabadi” felt. (Note also that the left arm of the coat, where the hand would be, has been placed atop the knife.)
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Judging from the lie of the land in the background, and from the abundance of wood and clearing, this photograph was almost certainly taken in the Kakhetian lowlands, where the Batsbis had to cut down trees to clear the land and to use the wood for their new homes.
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