In such photos, any search for metaphors seems to be an exaggeration for its own sake. Reality is more terrifying than fiction and interpretation.
Yes, this is one of those photographs in which I don't have the courage to even suggest anything. It seems like a sacrilege to speak out from my place (a very good book festival chair, from which I ask smart and educated people how we should live with each other when the limits of our experience are so incomparable even in the same family). Even if your profession, business, and skill is to testify, write, and search for words, they still leave you with extremely different experiences. To look at such pictures is to feel wrong. Or rather, to feel right, that is, embarrassed. From my chair at the book festival, I don't think about what's happening near Vuhledar, because I think about the prepared plan of talking to people who have to explain something to me or at least tell me how to live it now.
So let's not use any metaphors now, just the story of the photographer.
This picture was taken by Valentyn Kuzan, a photographer who is now in the army, during two nights at the stabilization center in Kurakhove, where the wounded from Vuhledar and the surrounding area were brought. The city on the mountain, from whose tall buildings the low-lying fields are so beautifully visible in the morning, is already becoming known. All those who did not know the map of Ukraine well (almost all of them) are now learning it with each destroyed town. You can see the map from a distance and it is covered in smoke, but as soon as a town or village catches fire, it is as if you are erasing the veil over that place with a coin, like those old cell phone recharge cards. And now you see the town, but it's hard to see what it really looks like. On the first night at the staging area, Valentyn Kuzan found a frantic flow of wounded, and these are the moments when everyone who has not yet heard of Vuhledar will hear about it.
Valentyn barely had time to film the aid being provided to the military, let alone talk to anyone. In that stabilization center, medics set up a table in the corridors where the wounded could finally drink tea, eat cookies or even a sandwich while waiting to be evacuated to a hospital. Some waited for a day, because they are evacuated mostly when it gets dark.
Both medics and the wounded, who can walk, go out to smoke at night under the building. What remains outside the picture is fear and the understanding that the Russians could drop something here at any moment. The photographer captures, without taking pictures, the stupid night, the blue dimmed light of the medics, and the calm, smooth flames of hot cigarettes that freeze between the fingers of those waiting for new wounded and those waiting to be taken away.
This photo shows a wounded soldier. He didn't want to be photographed, but eventually agreed with the photographer that he would not be recognized in such bandages, and it was necessary to show what was happening. It is the second night at the staging area, a little calmer than the previous one, but all the beds are occupied by those waiting for a car to the hospital. A man is sitting on one of the beds, behind him is a light blue wall, and behind it is the same stupid pitch black night and perfectly controllable air bombs. He has a cross on a chain around his neck and, if you look closely, a silver ring. We don't know what it means to him, but it must mean something to carry it so close to him.
This man did not tell the photographer anything. All the time he was on the phone or dialing someone. Did he call different people, or was the connection constantly interrupted? Valentyn Kuzan only caught and remembered how the man put the phone to his ear and said something like “hello, brother” or “hey, brother.”
It's hard to convey with one photo that someone is always in touch with the man - maybe two. Valentyn Kuzan has one more photo from that evening, he took it when the medical evacuation vehicle arrived and the wounded were transferred inside, where the bluish light mentioned above came from.
Inside the medevac, there are shelves in two rows on both sides, like compartments in a train. Someone is sitting, someone is lying down, and you can see the legs of the wounded hanging from the upper shelves. It was there, right in the center, that the photographer saw the man with the phone for the second time, still talking. Even his posture hadn't changed much. So Valentyn took another picture.
It's a good thing that we have cell phone service now, instead of two weeks of nothing from letter to letter, with no certainty. Kollezhanka's conversation jolts me out of my thoughts as she talks about the same disparate experience. Her sister writes to her and asks how you are, to which her friend says: “Nothing, I'm getting ready for the wedding, and you?
Nothing, we are moving, we are transferred to Vuhledar.
Text: Vera Kuriko
Photo: Valentyn Kuzan
In such photos, any search for metaphors seems to be an exaggeration for its own sake. Reality is more terrifying than fiction and interpretation.
Yes, this is one of those photographs in which I don't have the courage to even suggest anything. It seems like a sacrilege to speak out from my place (a very good book festival chair, from which I ask smart and educated people how we should live with each other when the limits of our experience are so incomparable even in the same family). Even if your profession, business, and skill is to testify, write, and search for words, they still leave you with extremely different experiences. To look at such pictures is to feel wrong. Or rather, to feel right, that is, embarrassed. From my chair at the book festival, I don't think about what's happening near Vuhledar, because I think about the prepared plan of talking to people who have to explain something to me or at least tell me how to live it now.
So let's not use any metaphors now, just the story of the photographer.
This picture was taken by Valentyn Kuzan, a photographer who is now in the army, during two nights at the stabilization center in Kurakhove, where the wounded from Vuhledar and the surrounding area were brought. The city on the mountain, from whose tall buildings the low-lying fields are so beautifully visible in the morning, is already becoming known. All those who did not know the map of Ukraine well (almost all of them) are now learning it with each destroyed town. You can see the map from a distance and it is covered in smoke, but as soon as a town or village catches fire, it is as if you are erasing the veil over that place with a coin, like those old cell phone recharge cards. And now you see the town, but it's hard to see what it really looks like. On the first night at the staging area, Valentyn Kuzan found a frantic flow of wounded, and these are the moments when everyone who has not yet heard of Vuhledar will hear about it.
Valentyn barely had time to film the aid being provided to the military, let alone talk to anyone. In that stabilization center, medics set up a table in the corridors where the wounded could finally drink tea, eat cookies or even a sandwich while waiting to be evacuated to a hospital. Some waited for a day, because they are evacuated mostly when it gets dark.
Both medics and the wounded, who can walk, go out to smoke at night under the building. What remains outside the picture is fear and the understanding that the Russians could drop something here at any moment. The photographer captures, without taking pictures, the stupid night, the blue dimmed light of the medics, and the calm, smooth flames of hot cigarettes that freeze between the fingers of those waiting for new wounded and those waiting to be taken away.
This photo shows a wounded soldier. He didn't want to be photographed, but eventually agreed with the photographer that he would not be recognized in such bandages, and it was necessary to show what was happening. It is the second night at the staging area, a little calmer than the previous one, but all the beds are occupied by those waiting for a car to the hospital. A man is sitting on one of the beds, behind him is a light blue wall, and behind it is the same stupid pitch black night and perfectly controllable air bombs. He has a cross on a chain around his neck and, if you look closely, a silver ring. We don't know what it means to him, but it must mean something to carry it so close to him.
This man did not tell the photographer anything. All the time he was on the phone or dialing someone. Did he call different people, or was the connection constantly interrupted? Valentyn Kuzan only caught and remembered how the man put the phone to his ear and said something like “hello, brother” or “hey, brother.”
It's hard to convey with one photo that someone is always in touch with the man - maybe two. Valentyn Kuzan has one more photo from that evening, he took it when the medical evacuation vehicle arrived and the wounded were transferred inside, where the bluish light mentioned above came from.
Inside the medevac, there are shelves in two rows on both sides, like compartments in a train. Someone is sitting, someone is lying down, and you can see the legs of the wounded hanging from the upper shelves. It was there, right in the center, that the photographer saw the man with the phone for the second time, still talking. Even his posture hadn't changed much. So Valentyn took another picture.
It's a good thing that we have cell phone service now, instead of two weeks of nothing from letter to letter, with no certainty. Kollezhanka's conversation jolts me out of my thoughts as she talks about the same disparate experience. Her sister writes to her and asks how you are, to which her friend says: “Nothing, I'm getting ready for the wedding, and you?
Nothing, we are moving, we are transferred to Vuhledar.
Text: Vera Kuriko
Photo: Valentyn Kuzan
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.
UAPP's activities span educational, social, research and cultural initiatives, as well as book publishing.
UAPP represents Ukrainian professional photography in the international photographic community and is an official member of the Federation of European Photographers (FEP) — an international organization representing more than 50,000 professional photographers in Europe and other countries around the world.
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