Women at Work

Alexander Roinashvili was born in 1846 into a family of farmers in Dusheti, a highland region about fifty miles from Tiflis, not far from the Georgian Military Road. He studied photography and painting with Theodor Chlamov in Tiflis in the 1860s, and opened his own studio in 1875–thus becoming the first professional photographer in Georgia.

Photo series by Roinashvili, one of the first ethnographic photographers in Georgia, documented a daily life of people.

Women at Workis an informal photo series by Roinashvili, brought together by a unifying theme: women engaged in traditional craft. His lens captures women weaving, looming, sewing, and performing other manual labor. These photographs highlight the diversity of Georgian crafts while revealing the often-unseen female force sustaining these practices through physically and creatively demanding work.


The work of Roinashvili reflects the diversity of the peoples of the Caucasus. Portraits of Greeks, Armenians, Tatars, Lazs, Lezghins join the Georgian mountaineers or Tiflis urbanites. In reality, few of these pictures were taken outside, as Roinashvili’s famous contemporary Dimitry Ermakov preferred, most photos were elaborately staged with props and involved long-exposure shots.

Although best known for his portraits of Tbilisi’s nobility, it’s Roinashvili’s images of everyday life that leave a lasting impression today. His lens brings to life overlooked scenes of the past: craft, labor, and the rhythm of ordinary existence, offering a rare window into social realities often excluded from formal histories. These photographs allow us to reimagine the face of work, community, and tradition with new clarity.