Pants on Top of Shoes

"In 2022, photographer Ivan Anisimov left Russia and spent the next two years in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. There, he encountered the quiet weight of displacement — the sense of estrangement, of living under the gaze of others shaped by history and politics. Like many migrants, he navigated not only a new city but also the unseen boundaries of perception and belonging, where every encounter carried echoes of conflict and the search for home.Ivan started to wander the streets of Tbilisi, taking in the city’s corners and faces. Movement became his way of thinking, wandering his state of mind. What caught his attention were the local men — their shoes and trousers, the textures, folds, and forms, and the way their slightly too long pants draped over their shoes. Through the fleeting photographs of passersby’s feet, Pants on Top of Shoes becomes a meditation on modern alienation — people adrift in the flow of life, half-asleep, half-aware, caught in a quiet hypnosis of movement and solitude."