We continue our series of interviews with professional Ukrainian documentary filmmakers.
We talked to Oleksandr Klymenko about his experience as a photojournalist for a newspaper, his experience of filming the war in the Balkans and Ukraine, and the advantages of black-and-white photography.
Watch the full interview with Oleksandr on YouTube:
I like the term “photojournalist”. My job is a live reportage, shooting life. A photojournalist, on the other hand, is a person who goes and shoots assignments from the editor. I define myself as a photojournalist. When you work a lot, you try to decide for yourself what you're going to shoot and what you're going to do. Of course, I worked as a photojournalist for the Voice of Ukraine newspaper since 1991, which hasn't existed for a long time. I performed some tasks, but I tried to look for tasks and topics for myself. It was wonderful and I liked it very much.
Let me tell you a little bit about the history of the newspaper. The newspaper was founded in late 1990. The name was invented by Dmytro Pavlychko by analogy with the Voice of America. It was 1990, and there were these communist newspapers called Pravda Ukrainy, Soviet Ukraine, Rabocha Gazeta, and Sielski Visti, which is where I worked after university, and it was very cool. Dmytro Pavlychko and the democratic majority decided, and everyone agreed, that the Verkhovna Rada should have its own newspaper that would convey their opinion, not the communist opinion, let's say, the general opinion. When all kinds of rallies and demonstrations took place, a massive propaganda attack would immediately begin in these communist newspapers, saying that this was done by Banderites, nationalists, and so on. Our newspaper resisted to a certain extent. Not even to a certain extent, in fact, we were a free newspaper: the deputies decided that each of them had the right to express their opinion in the newspaper, and everyone had a quota, and the party had a quota. That is, the Communists could disagree with the Rukh members, but the deputies could write whatever they wanted. In the first year, the circulation of our newspaper reached one million at once. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure to work in such a newspaper, in the free press.
In Lviv, there was a newspaper called “For a Free Ukraine,” which could be subscribed to throughout Ukraine. It also had a huge circulation. I subscribed to it and it came to Kyiv, to my mailbox, without any problems. I even have a photo there. On April 16, 1991, there was a big strike in Kyiv-the workers of the trolleybus plant, the Leninska Kuznia and Arsenal plants, which were industrial giants at the time, did not come to work. There was a chain of police standing there, and one of them was reading “For a Free Ukraine.” It was very famous.
At the Voice of Ukraine newspaper, I had a fancy two-room laboratory. I printed out photos there. I took pictures on film, of course, black and white. I developed the photos because I had to be in time for the room. The deadline was around twelve or one o'clock. You had to take a picture, run and give it to the newspaper.
The newspaper was published five times a week, except for Monday and Sunday. It was exciting - you had to take a picture, run back, develop it, print it, because they didn't scan the films - you needed a photo, dry it quickly, and give it back. It was interesting. What were we filming? We were filming life. At that time, all sorts of tumultuous processes began. There were a lot of events both in Kyiv and outside of Kyiv - strikes, rallies, demonstrations. For example, there was a very large strike of miners in Donetsk in 1990, by the way. I think that the photos I have now are very historical, they show how our Ukraine began. However, unfortunately, the period is completely different now.
It's a very long period, and I can't identify just five iconic photographs from that time. Let's assume that the tumultuous path to Ukraine's independence began in late 1989. That's when excavations began in Bykivnia, a place near Kyiv, a forest between Kyiv and Brovary, where there were mass graves of people repressed, killed by the system, killed by Stalin. We talked about this for a very long time. At first, they denied that “no, no, this is a German grave, they killed Germans there,” and so on. Finally, we went there in April 1989. We went with a correspondent from the newspaper I was working for at the time, the Village News, to film the excavation. The police, then still the police, were there, investigators, and they said: “No, you can't.” However, I had a correspondent with me, an old man, as I thought at the time, although he was actually 65-70 years old, and he said: “No, you all...”. In short, we went to the set. I took pictures of how they were digging up these bodies. There is a photo of a human skull with a hole in the head, so it is clear that this is a person who was shot. Then I saw boxes with a mountain of bones. I wanted to go further, but they didn't let me. I took pictures with a telephoto lens. This is one of the most significant photographs.
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In 1990, there were strikes by miners in Donetsk. This is also such a powerful picture - the whole square in front of the then Regional Party Committee is filled with miners who have just come out of the mine. They are unwashed, they are black. I arrived in the morning - it was so light, such a contrast to the morning. I was shooting with black and white film and made a few shots on a slide. The slide film didn't turn out very well - everything was yellow and there were a lot of black people. These people, the miners, they felt strong.
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I remember the filming in Kolomyia, where there was a “Cathedral of the Spiritual Republic”. It was organized by Oles Berdnyk, a writer, fiction writer, and dissident. Thousands of people went to the mountain and held a prayer service there. I have some interesting photos from there.
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August 24, 1991, of course. The day when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Act of Independence. I took pictures of all the passions in and around the Verkhovna Rada hall. For example, such a simple photo that everyone knows is just a poster with the inscription “Ukraine is leaving the USSR” and people shouting something. Actually, I don't really like photos where you have to read. A photo should speak without text. For example, when a foreigner looks at this photo, they will not understand what it is. However, on the other hand, this photo cannot be understood without text. “Ukraine is leaving the USSR” was a very big deal back then, but now we are free.
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I remember a photo with Viacheslav Chornovil that I took on August 18 in Zaporizhzhia, on the eve of the coup. It was the Chervona Ruta music festival.
I want to mention a couple of other iconic photos. In the fall of 1990, there was a huge rally at the stadium. People were walking from the central stadium to the then Lenin Museum. They were carrying all kinds of posters, including the inscription “We don't want the Moscow yoke.” There was also Lenin's coffin, which was very creative. And the final photo is from August 24, 1991, when everyone-the People's Council, Chornovil, and other people-gathered near the rostrum and started singing. Everything was over, the flag was taken out, and they started singing-first “Chervona Kalyna” and then the national anthem. This photo is very significant.
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The historian and writer Oleksandr Zinchenko has now published a book, How Ukrainians Destroyed the Empire, based on his own film. The book is illustrated entirely with my photographs, and this photo of everyone singing is on the cover.
Vyacheslav Chornovil showed the trident with his hand, and so did everyone else at all the rallies. On the eve of the 30th anniversary of Independence, a creative agency, supported by the Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, decided to show the trident in a different way. A discussion started. I posted a photo with Viacheslav Chornovil, and Channel 5 journalist Olya Snisarchuk, the wife of my friend Vladyslav Sodel, made a post and said: “Here is the trident”. Everyone picked up this post.
I photographed Vyacheslav Chornovil a lot. He is mostly very sad and thoughtful in the photos. Sometimes I look at these photos and feel pain. Chornovil spoke on August 24 - he was shouting, waving his arms, he was a very emotional person.
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I also filmed a lot of Kravchuk, and we can mention Kuchma. I was working for Der Spiegel magazine, and they arranged an interview with Kuchma right after he was elected president. A large delegation came from Hamburg, from the magazine, including the deputy editor and journalists. We went to see him at the office of the Ukrainian Union of Entrepreneurs on Khreshchatyk. He was still there at the time. He was talking, I was filming, and suddenly he laughed very hard. I like it, he laughs very sincerely. Of course, the photo was not included in the interview, which was very official. But I still have the photo, it was printed in books. There is no disrespect in this photo.
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We can say that the further we go, the more photographs we have. I can’t even imagine someone in the year 2000 using a phone to take photos. Do you have a phone? Then you’re a photographer. I’m saying this without any irony—phones can capture anything with decent quality. If you’re in the right place during a significant event and have a phone, you’ll capture it. It’s often said that our war is the most photographed, and that’s true. There are so many photos. I follow war photography closely, but, for example, I can only recall Malolyetka—his photos from Mariupol are truly iconic. I believe that these images, if they didn’t stop the war, then they definitely changed the world’s attitude towards it. I also remember photos by Kozatsky, the guy who was in the basements of Mariupol, who managed to transmit those photos—those were also remarkable.
There were a lot of photos from Bucha, with many people there. It was an open area, and anyone could theoretically go there and take pictures. But no one could go to Mariupol. There, the risk to life was enormous, just like in the films. That’s my take on why the images from Mariupol are iconic.
In truth, the world seems to move in circles. Unfortunately. I mentioned the excavations in Bykivnia, and when I saw the excavations in Izyum, it was almost identical. The only difference was that here you could film freely; there were a lot of people, but the themes, the stories, and the exhumed graves were nearly the same. I photographed a destroyed library in Sarajevo, and later in Maryinka. Now there are many photos of destroyed libraries. Why don’t we see these photos? I don’t know. The world is vast, with so much information—it’s hard for us to keep track of everything.
I photographed the war in the Balkans. In 1994, the press service of the Ministry of Defense asked me if I would fly with them and if I was afraid. What was there to fear? Everything was fine. We flew in an IL-76 plane, landing in Ancona. There were a lot of people—130 or 140 soldiers on board—and we couldn’t fly any further. We were supposed to refuel and continue, but there was an explosion at the Sarajevo airfield, and they banned landings, so we stayed overnight in Ancona. We arrived in Sarajevo in the morning and went to the base where the 240th Ukrainian battalion was stationed—it was a former military school. This was a location in the mountains, with snipers shooting and mortar shelling targeting the people trapped in Sarajevo. Some of our soldiers in that school also died. The building was shelled from the mountains, and the soldiers made barricades with sandbags. That was the first day. The next day, I was eager to shoot something. There were two other photographers—Pavlo Pashchenko and Valeriy Solovyov. So, we were in Sarajevo, the whole world watching, and we were just sitting at the base, capturing staged shots. Eventually, we found someone who guided us around Sarajevo.
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We didn’t even have accreditation and couldn’t go into the city on our own. By the way, I was almost arrested there, but was quickly freed. In Sarajevo, a person with a camera is considered a spy. Where are they coming from? What are they photographing? Oh—they must be a spy if they’re not labeled "Press." We walked around the city. Of course, I took some photos there. We visited the library in Sarajevo, then another place where people were running across the streets. There was a bus and then an open space being shot at from the mountains. I captured that. These are some iconic shots from Sarajevo. Later, I saw people collecting water. I photographed everything I wanted to show.
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I have emotional photographs. We flew from Mykolaiv, and the day before the flight, the soldiers went to church. The priest said, "If any of you are not baptized, I will baptize you now." Many people, around twenty, agreed to be baptized. I captured it. They were kneeling, listening to the priest, lighting candles. That became a separate series for me.
I photographed in the city of Mostar. I have a picture of a man named Zvonko on Church Street in Mostar. The street was completely shot up; it no longer existed. Of course, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening with us now. There were just buildings riddled with bullet holes. There wasn’t a single flat surface—everything was scarred by bullets. We were walking, and then an old man joined us. We started talking. "Hello" – "Hello." "Who are you?" – "We’re journalists from Ukraine." "Oh, and let me tell you..." and the man started talking to us. He began to complain: "I fought, I’m a veteran. But they won’t give me money there." Such an emotional old man. In Mostar, I also took a picture of a destroyed building—everything was burned down, and next to it, right up against it, one wall was already rebuilt. White marble... Such a contrast.
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Now, photographing the war is expensive. For example, I have to take a car from Kyiv, drive, spend money on fuel, and find a place to stay, whether in a hotel or not. The last time I was near Bakhmut, in Ivanivske, was in April of last year. The photos I took there, I sold to foreign agencies.
I experienced being a foreign journalist when I traveled to the former Yugoslavia. I would arrive, look around, and think, "Oh, how bad it is." Then I’d come back to Kyiv, and everything was fine. In 1994, I photographed the war in the Balkans. I believe these are some general rules of journalism. Sarajevo didn’t experience the same kind of shelling that we’ve had since 2014, for example, in Ivanivske. You have to be careful. If there’s shooting, lie down.
What does it mean that young colleagues weren’t prepared for the war?
A journalist must always be ready for anything.
We talked to them about PTSD. Maybe it’s buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, but I can’t say, "Oh, I suffer, I’ve seen death," or anything like that. There was one time, and I think it passed quickly. We spent two hours in a car with two corpses. That was in July 2014, on the Luhansk front. One soldier’s head was in a bag, with a lot of blood. That affected me—it was the scariest thing. Later, we were under fire, but it didn’t touch me as much...
They say that not only photographers who see war but also editors who follow the war, seeing all these brutal images on their screens, shouldn’t give themselves over to it too much, or they’ll burn out quickly. You shouldn’t drink. You should read books, go fishing, and treat it like a job.
Journalistic education and experience help with this. You read something, hear something somewhere. For example, in 2014, I read that if you’re afraid to go to war or feel bad there—don’t go. But if you do go, don’t be afraid—you’ve arrived, and there’s nothing you can change now. Just behave carefully. If something happens, you must be ready. Before going on a trip, you should get all your affairs in order. If, God forbid, something happens to you, people won’t have to deal with a mess, and no one will speak ill of you. Everything should be clear and finished, as scary as that sounds. I’m not a hero; I’m just like everyone else.
In 2014, under fire, when mines were falling, I was just as scared. We were near the village of Tonenke, close to Avdiivka, where the road led to the airport. There was some random shelling in the fall of 2014. We were walking along the road with my colleague, a journalist, when Grad rockets and mines started falling. The shelling continued, so we ran to a clay house where soldiers were stationed. The shelling kept going; we were lying on the floor, and across the road was a concrete hangar—there was a fire station, and it was safer there. So, we eventually ran there. The shelling continued, everything around us booming and booming. I wrote about this in a book. There was this feeling of wanting to drop everything, run outside, and just run. Just run away from this place. There were thoughts about how terrible it would be to die helplessly—to just lie there and be killed. It would be better to run into battle with a machine gun, shouting "Hurrah!"—that would be more interesting.
I also want to say that all journalists—me, and the young, the old, the new—we go and return. We might think, "Oh yes, I was under fire there." But on the frontlines, the guys sit in trenches for months, two months, three months, a year. So we’re just kindergartners. We shouldn’t be heroized.
In this case, I can be called a photojournalist who went to the Verkhovna Rada on assignment. I worked for the Verkhovna Rada’s newspaper, "Holos Ukrayiny." The only time it was interesting was on August 24, when I photographed with all my heart and soul. Maybe there were some other instances...
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In February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada played no significant role, but perhaps I am mistaken. In 2004, during the Orange Revolution, the Verkhovna Rada passed laws and took an active part to prevent anything catastrophic from happening. In 2014, the Verkhovna Rada did nothing.
I photographed in the hall below. There were three of us photographers, and two of us would go to the Verkhovna Rada alternately, week by week. Honestly, it was a bit dull, not very interesting. It all depended on the personalities—when the deputies were engaging, the work became interesting. I mean the first convocation—Pavlychko, Drach, Zaiets, Plyushch, and the deputies from Lviv. There were constant discussions, which were interesting to listen to.
After university, I worked for Silski Visti, then for the newspaper Holos Ukrainy, photographing on black-and-white film. Later, I worked for the magazine Der Spiegel, where they strictly used only black-and-white photography. Color film was available, but they shot only in black and white. I think by 1995, they switched to color. At the newspaper, we switched to color film before digital, sometime in 1996 or 1997.
I prefer my black-and-white photographs more. It’s hard for me to explain why. I remember doing it all myself: shooting, developing, printing. By the way, I still print my photos—I have a preserved lab
Now I shoot digitally and in color. Shooting digitally in black-and-white is easy; you can always add the effect in Photoshop. But when you shoot on black-and-white film, it’s a completely different chemistry. After shooting digitally, when you don’t think about saving resources, you just press the button and wait for the best photo. When you switch to black-and-white film, you forget yourself and shoot rapidly, like with a machine gun. I traveled to Africa several times and always brought a camera with black-and-white film. I used a lot of it, and as you know, it’s an expensive process nowadays. I love my black-and-white photos more. Maybe because they feel more historical. Maybe because there weren’t as many photographers back then as there are now. I don’t know...
I love my black-and-white photos not because of nostalgia. Color can distract when you’re looking at a photo. But, for instance, I captured an explosion in Donetsk—it was in the fall of 2014. Everything was burning, I was shooting, and suddenly it exploded, and I was ready, capturing it all. Of course, the colors were striking. I thought if I had shot it on black-and-white film, the image wouldn’t have been as impactful as it was with those colors. On the other hand, something else in black-and-white would have been better.
We worked on the material:
Text Author: Katya Moskaliuk
Literary Editor: Yulia Futei
Website Manager: Vladyslav Kukhar
We continue our series of interviews with professional Ukrainian documentary filmmakers.
We talked to Oleksandr Klymenko about his experience as a photojournalist for a newspaper, his experience of filming the war in the Balkans and Ukraine, and the advantages of black-and-white photography.
Watch the full interview with Oleksandr on YouTube:
I like the term “photojournalist”. My job is a live reportage, shooting life. A photojournalist, on the other hand, is a person who goes and shoots assignments from the editor. I define myself as a photojournalist. When you work a lot, you try to decide for yourself what you're going to shoot and what you're going to do. Of course, I worked as a photojournalist for the Voice of Ukraine newspaper since 1991, which hasn't existed for a long time. I performed some tasks, but I tried to look for tasks and topics for myself. It was wonderful and I liked it very much.
Let me tell you a little bit about the history of the newspaper. The newspaper was founded in late 1990. The name was invented by Dmytro Pavlychko by analogy with the Voice of America. It was 1990, and there were these communist newspapers called Pravda Ukrainy, Soviet Ukraine, Rabocha Gazeta, and Sielski Visti, which is where I worked after university, and it was very cool. Dmytro Pavlychko and the democratic majority decided, and everyone agreed, that the Verkhovna Rada should have its own newspaper that would convey their opinion, not the communist opinion, let's say, the general opinion. When all kinds of rallies and demonstrations took place, a massive propaganda attack would immediately begin in these communist newspapers, saying that this was done by Banderites, nationalists, and so on. Our newspaper resisted to a certain extent. Not even to a certain extent, in fact, we were a free newspaper: the deputies decided that each of them had the right to express their opinion in the newspaper, and everyone had a quota, and the party had a quota. That is, the Communists could disagree with the Rukh members, but the deputies could write whatever they wanted. In the first year, the circulation of our newspaper reached one million at once. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure to work in such a newspaper, in the free press.
In Lviv, there was a newspaper called “For a Free Ukraine,” which could be subscribed to throughout Ukraine. It also had a huge circulation. I subscribed to it and it came to Kyiv, to my mailbox, without any problems. I even have a photo there. On April 16, 1991, there was a big strike in Kyiv-the workers of the trolleybus plant, the Leninska Kuznia and Arsenal plants, which were industrial giants at the time, did not come to work. There was a chain of police standing there, and one of them was reading “For a Free Ukraine.” It was very famous.
At the Voice of Ukraine newspaper, I had a fancy two-room laboratory. I printed out photos there. I took pictures on film, of course, black and white. I developed the photos because I had to be in time for the room. The deadline was around twelve or one o'clock. You had to take a picture, run and give it to the newspaper.
The newspaper was published five times a week, except for Monday and Sunday. It was exciting - you had to take a picture, run back, develop it, print it, because they didn't scan the films - you needed a photo, dry it quickly, and give it back. It was interesting. What were we filming? We were filming life. At that time, all sorts of tumultuous processes began. There were a lot of events both in Kyiv and outside of Kyiv - strikes, rallies, demonstrations. For example, there was a very large strike of miners in Donetsk in 1990, by the way. I think that the photos I have now are very historical, they show how our Ukraine began. However, unfortunately, the period is completely different now.
It's a very long period, and I can't identify just five iconic photographs from that time. Let's assume that the tumultuous path to Ukraine's independence began in late 1989. That's when excavations began in Bykivnia, a place near Kyiv, a forest between Kyiv and Brovary, where there were mass graves of people repressed, killed by the system, killed by Stalin. We talked about this for a very long time. At first, they denied that “no, no, this is a German grave, they killed Germans there,” and so on. Finally, we went there in April 1989. We went with a correspondent from the newspaper I was working for at the time, the Village News, to film the excavation. The police, then still the police, were there, investigators, and they said: “No, you can't.” However, I had a correspondent with me, an old man, as I thought at the time, although he was actually 65-70 years old, and he said: “No, you all...”. In short, we went to the set. I took pictures of how they were digging up these bodies. There is a photo of a human skull with a hole in the head, so it is clear that this is a person who was shot. Then I saw boxes with a mountain of bones. I wanted to go further, but they didn't let me. I took pictures with a telephoto lens. This is one of the most significant photographs.
In 1990, there were strikes by miners in Donetsk. This is also such a powerful picture - the whole square in front of the then Regional Party Committee is filled with miners who have just come out of the mine. They are unwashed, they are black. I arrived in the morning - it was so light, such a contrast to the morning. I was shooting with black and white film and made a few shots on a slide. The slide film didn't turn out very well - everything was yellow and there were a lot of black people. These people, the miners, they felt strong.
I remember the filming in Kolomyia, where there was a “Cathedral of the Spiritual Republic”. It was organized by Oles Berdnyk, a writer, fiction writer, and dissident. Thousands of people went to the mountain and held a prayer service there. I have some interesting photos from there.
August 24, 1991, of course. The day when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Act of Independence. I took pictures of all the passions in and around the Verkhovna Rada hall. For example, such a simple photo that everyone knows is just a poster with the inscription “Ukraine is leaving the USSR” and people shouting something. Actually, I don't really like photos where you have to read. A photo should speak without text. For example, when a foreigner looks at this photo, they will not understand what it is. However, on the other hand, this photo cannot be understood without text. “Ukraine is leaving the USSR” was a very big deal back then, but now we are free.
I remember a photo with Viacheslav Chornovil that I took on August 18 in Zaporizhzhia, on the eve of the coup. It was the Chervona Ruta music festival.
I want to mention a couple of other iconic photos. In the fall of 1990, there was a huge rally at the stadium. People were walking from the central stadium to the then Lenin Museum. They were carrying all kinds of posters, including the inscription “We don't want the Moscow yoke.” There was also Lenin's coffin, which was very creative. And the final photo is from August 24, 1991, when everyone-the People's Council, Chornovil, and other people-gathered near the rostrum and started singing. Everything was over, the flag was taken out, and they started singing-first “Chervona Kalyna” and then the national anthem. This photo is very significant.
The historian and writer Oleksandr Zinchenko has now published a book, How Ukrainians Destroyed the Empire, based on his own film. The book is illustrated entirely with my photographs, and this photo of everyone singing is on the cover.
Vyacheslav Chornovil showed the trident with his hand, and so did everyone else at all the rallies. On the eve of the 30th anniversary of Independence, a creative agency, supported by the Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, decided to show the trident in a different way. A discussion started. I posted a photo with Viacheslav Chornovil, and Channel 5 journalist Olya Snisarchuk, the wife of my friend Vladyslav Sodel, made a post and said: “Here is the trident”. Everyone picked up this post.
I photographed Vyacheslav Chornovil a lot. He is mostly very sad and thoughtful in the photos. Sometimes I look at these photos and feel pain. Chornovil spoke on August 24 - he was shouting, waving his arms, he was a very emotional person.
I also filmed a lot of Kravchuk, and we can mention Kuchma. I was working for Der Spiegel magazine, and they arranged an interview with Kuchma right after he was elected president. A large delegation came from Hamburg, from the magazine, including the deputy editor and journalists. We went to see him at the office of the Ukrainian Union of Entrepreneurs on Khreshchatyk. He was still there at the time. He was talking, I was filming, and suddenly he laughed very hard. I like it, he laughs very sincerely. Of course, the photo was not included in the interview, which was very official. But I still have the photo, it was printed in books. There is no disrespect in this photo.
We can say that the further we go, the more photographs we have. I can’t even imagine someone in the year 2000 using a phone to take photos. Do you have a phone? Then you’re a photographer. I’m saying this without any irony—phones can capture anything with decent quality. If you’re in the right place during a significant event and have a phone, you’ll capture it. It’s often said that our war is the most photographed, and that’s true. There are so many photos. I follow war photography closely, but, for example, I can only recall Malolyetka—his photos from Mariupol are truly iconic. I believe that these images, if they didn’t stop the war, then they definitely changed the world’s attitude towards it. I also remember photos by Kozatsky, the guy who was in the basements of Mariupol, who managed to transmit those photos—those were also remarkable.
There were a lot of photos from Bucha, with many people there. It was an open area, and anyone could theoretically go there and take pictures. But no one could go to Mariupol. There, the risk to life was enormous, just like in the films. That’s my take on why the images from Mariupol are iconic.
In truth, the world seems to move in circles. Unfortunately. I mentioned the excavations in Bykivnia, and when I saw the excavations in Izyum, it was almost identical. The only difference was that here you could film freely; there were a lot of people, but the themes, the stories, and the exhumed graves were nearly the same. I photographed a destroyed library in Sarajevo, and later in Maryinka. Now there are many photos of destroyed libraries. Why don’t we see these photos? I don’t know. The world is vast, with so much information—it’s hard for us to keep track of everything.
I photographed the war in the Balkans. In 1994, the press service of the Ministry of Defense asked me if I would fly with them and if I was afraid. What was there to fear? Everything was fine. We flew in an IL-76 plane, landing in Ancona. There were a lot of people—130 or 140 soldiers on board—and we couldn’t fly any further. We were supposed to refuel and continue, but there was an explosion at the Sarajevo airfield, and they banned landings, so we stayed overnight in Ancona. We arrived in Sarajevo in the morning and went to the base where the 240th Ukrainian battalion was stationed—it was a former military school. This was a location in the mountains, with snipers shooting and mortar shelling targeting the people trapped in Sarajevo. Some of our soldiers in that school also died. The building was shelled from the mountains, and the soldiers made barricades with sandbags. That was the first day. The next day, I was eager to shoot something. There were two other photographers—Pavlo Pashchenko and Valeriy Solovyov. So, we were in Sarajevo, the whole world watching, and we were just sitting at the base, capturing staged shots. Eventually, we found someone who guided us around Sarajevo.
We didn’t even have accreditation and couldn’t go into the city on our own. By the way, I was almost arrested there, but was quickly freed. In Sarajevo, a person with a camera is considered a spy. Where are they coming from? What are they photographing? Oh—they must be a spy if they’re not labeled "Press." We walked around the city. Of course, I took some photos there. We visited the library in Sarajevo, then another place where people were running across the streets. There was a bus and then an open space being shot at from the mountains. I captured that. These are some iconic shots from Sarajevo. Later, I saw people collecting water. I photographed everything I wanted to show.
I have emotional photographs. We flew from Mykolaiv, and the day before the flight, the soldiers went to church. The priest said, "If any of you are not baptized, I will baptize you now." Many people, around twenty, agreed to be baptized. I captured it. They were kneeling, listening to the priest, lighting candles. That became a separate series for me.
I photographed in the city of Mostar. I have a picture of a man named Zvonko on Church Street in Mostar. The street was completely shot up; it no longer existed. Of course, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening with us now. There were just buildings riddled with bullet holes. There wasn’t a single flat surface—everything was scarred by bullets. We were walking, and then an old man joined us. We started talking. "Hello" – "Hello." "Who are you?" – "We’re journalists from Ukraine." "Oh, and let me tell you..." and the man started talking to us. He began to complain: "I fought, I’m a veteran. But they won’t give me money there." Such an emotional old man. In Mostar, I also took a picture of a destroyed building—everything was burned down, and next to it, right up against it, one wall was already rebuilt. White marble... Such a contrast.
Now, photographing the war is expensive. For example, I have to take a car from Kyiv, drive, spend money on fuel, and find a place to stay, whether in a hotel or not. The last time I was near Bakhmut, in Ivanivske, was in April of last year. The photos I took there, I sold to foreign agencies.
I experienced being a foreign journalist when I traveled to the former Yugoslavia. I would arrive, look around, and think, "Oh, how bad it is." Then I’d come back to Kyiv, and everything was fine. In 1994, I photographed the war in the Balkans. I believe these are some general rules of journalism. Sarajevo didn’t experience the same kind of shelling that we’ve had since 2014, for example, in Ivanivske. You have to be careful. If there’s shooting, lie down.
What does it mean that young colleagues weren’t prepared for the war?
A journalist must always be ready for anything.
We talked to them about PTSD. Maybe it’s buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, but I can’t say, "Oh, I suffer, I’ve seen death," or anything like that. There was one time, and I think it passed quickly. We spent two hours in a car with two corpses. That was in July 2014, on the Luhansk front. One soldier’s head was in a bag, with a lot of blood. That affected me—it was the scariest thing. Later, we were under fire, but it didn’t touch me as much...
They say that not only photographers who see war but also editors who follow the war, seeing all these brutal images on their screens, shouldn’t give themselves over to it too much, or they’ll burn out quickly. You shouldn’t drink. You should read books, go fishing, and treat it like a job.
Journalistic education and experience help with this. You read something, hear something somewhere. For example, in 2014, I read that if you’re afraid to go to war or feel bad there—don’t go. But if you do go, don’t be afraid—you’ve arrived, and there’s nothing you can change now. Just behave carefully. If something happens, you must be ready. Before going on a trip, you should get all your affairs in order. If, God forbid, something happens to you, people won’t have to deal with a mess, and no one will speak ill of you. Everything should be clear and finished, as scary as that sounds. I’m not a hero; I’m just like everyone else.
In 2014, under fire, when mines were falling, I was just as scared. We were near the village of Tonenke, close to Avdiivka, where the road led to the airport. There was some random shelling in the fall of 2014. We were walking along the road with my colleague, a journalist, when Grad rockets and mines started falling. The shelling continued, so we ran to a clay house where soldiers were stationed. The shelling kept going; we were lying on the floor, and across the road was a concrete hangar—there was a fire station, and it was safer there. So, we eventually ran there. The shelling continued, everything around us booming and booming. I wrote about this in a book. There was this feeling of wanting to drop everything, run outside, and just run. Just run away from this place. There were thoughts about how terrible it would be to die helplessly—to just lie there and be killed. It would be better to run into battle with a machine gun, shouting "Hurrah!"—that would be more interesting.
I also want to say that all journalists—me, and the young, the old, the new—we go and return. We might think, "Oh yes, I was under fire there." But on the frontlines, the guys sit in trenches for months, two months, three months, a year. So we’re just kindergartners. We shouldn’t be heroized.
In this case, I can be called a photojournalist who went to the Verkhovna Rada on assignment. I worked for the Verkhovna Rada’s newspaper, "Holos Ukrayiny." The only time it was interesting was on August 24, when I photographed with all my heart and soul. Maybe there were some other instances...
In February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada played no significant role, but perhaps I am mistaken. In 2004, during the Orange Revolution, the Verkhovna Rada passed laws and took an active part to prevent anything catastrophic from happening. In 2014, the Verkhovna Rada did nothing.
I photographed in the hall below. There were three of us photographers, and two of us would go to the Verkhovna Rada alternately, week by week. Honestly, it was a bit dull, not very interesting. It all depended on the personalities—when the deputies were engaging, the work became interesting. I mean the first convocation—Pavlychko, Drach, Zaiets, Plyushch, and the deputies from Lviv. There were constant discussions, which were interesting to listen to.
After university, I worked for Silski Visti, then for the newspaper Holos Ukrainy, photographing on black-and-white film. Later, I worked for the magazine Der Spiegel, where they strictly used only black-and-white photography. Color film was available, but they shot only in black and white. I think by 1995, they switched to color. At the newspaper, we switched to color film before digital, sometime in 1996 or 1997.
I prefer my black-and-white photographs more. It’s hard for me to explain why. I remember doing it all myself: shooting, developing, printing. By the way, I still print my photos—I have a preserved lab
Now I shoot digitally and in color. Shooting digitally in black-and-white is easy; you can always add the effect in Photoshop. But when you shoot on black-and-white film, it’s a completely different chemistry. After shooting digitally, when you don’t think about saving resources, you just press the button and wait for the best photo. When you switch to black-and-white film, you forget yourself and shoot rapidly, like with a machine gun. I traveled to Africa several times and always brought a camera with black-and-white film. I used a lot of it, and as you know, it’s an expensive process nowadays. I love my black-and-white photos more. Maybe because they feel more historical. Maybe because there weren’t as many photographers back then as there are now. I don’t know...
I love my black-and-white photos not because of nostalgia. Color can distract when you’re looking at a photo. But, for instance, I captured an explosion in Donetsk—it was in the fall of 2014. Everything was burning, I was shooting, and suddenly it exploded, and I was ready, capturing it all. Of course, the colors were striking. I thought if I had shot it on black-and-white film, the image wouldn’t have been as impactful as it was with those colors. On the other hand, something else in black-and-white would have been better.
We worked on the material:
Text Author: Katya Moskaliuk
Literary Editor: Yulia Futei
Website Manager: Vladyslav Kukhar
UAPP is an independent association of professional Ukrainian photographers, designed to protect their interests, support, develop and promote Ukrainian photography as an important element of national culture.
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