Today's guest was Oleksandr Hlyadelov, a Ukrainian documentary photographer, photojournalist who covered the war conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan and Ukraine.
Today the conversation will be about analogies in the modern world, the experience of photographing wars for 40 years and the multiplicity of documentary photography.
Watch the full release on YouTube:
By my first specialty, I am an optical engineer and I understand that optics is a German science and a German manufactory, I am a supporter of this idea. I can tell a lot about Leica. And as a tool, it helps me a lot in the photography that I do. I am almost invisible with this camera. People react positively to her because she is small, she is not aggressive and very quiet. Well, this is a reliable camera, very reliable.
I can't compete with her at night, or when there is little light. But I am so slightly comforted by the idea that a modern digital camera sees more than the human eye, so it is. And the film will more or less match.
A photo on my phone for me is a visual diary for memory and that's it. It is a tool that allows you to capture moments of life, share your thoughts and emotions, and simply explore the world around you. Mobile phones make photography accessible to everyone, regardless of experience level or budget. This breaks down barriers and allows everyone to tell their story through images.
Although many perceive photos taken on the phone as drafts, I believe that they have value in themselves. They are sincere, relaxed and often reflect reality more authentically than photos taken with a professional camera. The mobile is always with me, so I can capture the moment that happened immediately without losing any detail.
As an example, I can mention the photographer Dmitry Gavrish, who worked a lot for the American media. He lived in New York and created the photo book “Inshallah” during the war in Afghanistan. Interestingly, to shoot this book, he used not only a professional camera, but also an iPhone. He explained that the phone allowed him to be closer to people and events, to take more spontaneous and personal photos.
Photos on the phone are just a household thing and a household photo, nothing more.
Photo exhibitions are a kind of filter of what my photo should be. She may not be on the show, but she has to be so that she can be on it. You were today at the exhibition “Farewell Slavyanka”, where there are only 13 photos, and there may be 100 of them, for example. In space, it is small, but they have been made for more than 30 years.
This song appeared after the march was written. The march was written on the Balkan wars, that is, on the relation of Imperial Russia to the Balkans in 1912. And all the words were written after that.
It quickly became the soundtrack of the imperial encroachments of the Russian army.
Perhaps you remember that the train number 1 from the Kiev railway station, Kyiv-Moscow, departed under the march “Farewell Slavyanka”.
This song has radically changed its meaning: since the victory march in World War II, it has become an accompaniment to the modern aggression, genocide and total destruction that Russia is waging.
And if you now type in Google “Farewell Slavyanka” in Russian, then the first thing you will see is how Z military columns are driving in the direction of Ukraine under this march. It took on a completely different context.
This exhibition is part of the struggle against internal contradiction and acceptance of the new reality.
I photograph it because it happened to us. This is my country. And it's another question, if I were a different age, would I be sitting here. I think I would actually be at the front. Young people like me, unfortunately, are not taken yet. You know, Marushchenko once told me that he felt the transition from the age of 50 to 60 and after 60 was like he didn't need to take pictures anymore. And it's very, very personal for everyone. It's not just about photography, I think, really. And I feel the very act of photographing, and in general, what I do, just as it seemed at first. I'm just as curious, my eye sees the same way, I have hope. And people recognize my photos without seeing the signatures under them.
I hope that what I do now is not much, but it will have both meaning and power now and then.
Photography is such a preserved time. That is, time as such if it is felt from this photograph. We are not physicists, it is easier for us to talk about time, because if we touch the physical quantity, there are so many questions at once, what is time, or does it exist at all? So we will say the time, we will say the action that takes place, even if you do not see it, something hidden, it can all be in documentary photography. And what you do, if you are a photographer, is your specialty, that is, it has to have an image, it has to act. All together.
Documentary photography is an art in its extreme manifestations.
The meaning of photographing on film for me is that I control, that is, I print with my hands if possible.
Leica and black and white film are a great privilege that gives you time to think, to think. This is not a slowness, but a privilege. You are the owner of your time. You are not attached, especially when you compare how many of those who sat here with me and talked about their work in the war work, it is hard work. And then everything needs to be reset, edited. I have time. And printing, when I take a photo, when I take a picture, I already have an understanding of how it should be printed. And if the appearance of the film is just a routine, a typical routine, nothing interesting, you have to be neat, the solutions should be clean, the temperature should be as it should be, and the time is the same, how much it manifests itself there, how much it is fixed, how much it is washed. And when you print a photo, you work on the image. And every handprint can be done there, they are all numbered and I limit the reprints, but one from the other, if it is hand printed, will be a little different. Not for the worse or for the better, but just a little bit different. And this is uniqueness. Just uniqueness. And I love it. I love to print.
Freedom is effort. Absolute freedom does not exist. Something keeps us going anyway, something sets some kind of framework. Absolute freedom is that you were killed, you died, and that's it. This is freedom, perhaps.
I do what I want mostly. All these photos that you saw at the exhibition, no one sent me there, I left myself. It was my decision, my desire, I wanted to see, understand what was happening.
I don't know what will happen over time. I hope this is not a century war, as the war of the Kingdom of England and France was.
In 2015, at the Closer club, photographer from Magnum agency Abbas Attar gave an open lecture showing his photos on the screen. Then he was asked: “Why did you stop photographing conflicts?”. Abbas replied, “Because I can't run fast anymore,” and laughed, you know? I still can, because I run cross country three times a week, I'm not ashamed to be where I have to sometimes run fast with everything on you.
We are grateful Work.ua for supporting and assisting in strengthening the voices of Ukrainian documentary filmmakers.
Thank you.
Oleksandr Hlyadelov — Ukrainian documentary photographer, photojournalist.
As a photographer, he covered military conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan and Ukraine. Since 1997, he has been actively cooperating with the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres). Collaborates with international organizations: MSF, HRW, The Global Fund, UNAIDS, UNICEF.
Addresses social topics: war conflicts, humanitarian crises, homeless children, prisons, HIV/AIDS epidemics, tuberculosis and Hepatitis C, drug addiction. He does not consider himself a war photographer, although some of his robots are dedicated to wars and conflicts.
He consciously takes pictures with an analog camera on black and white film and prints his own photos in his home photo lab in Kyiv.
He was wounded twice in Moldova and in Donbas near Ilovaisk.
Awards and honors: Grand Prix of Ukrpresfoto-97 for the series of pictures “Abandoned Children”; Hasselblad Prize at the European Photography Competition in Vevey, Switzerland, Images'98; Mother Jones 2001 Medal of Excellence of the International Fund for Documentary Photography in San Francisco, USA; “Moving Walls 2002” of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York, USA. Winner of the Shevchenko Prize 2020 for the photo project “Carousel”.
He lives and works in Kyiv.
Elena Guseynova— Ukrainian writer, radio host, radio producer and moderator of the meeting. Since 2016, he has been working on Radio Culture (Social). She is currently the editor-in-chief of the Editorial Radio Theater and Literary Programs.
The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Marusya Maruzhenko
Site Manager: Vladislav Kuhar
Photos from the personal archives of Oleksandr Hlyadelov
Today's guest was Oleksandr Hlyadelov, a Ukrainian documentary photographer, photojournalist who covered the war conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan and Ukraine.
Today the conversation will be about analogies in the modern world, the experience of photographing wars for 40 years and the multiplicity of documentary photography.
Watch the full release on YouTube:
By my first specialty, I am an optical engineer and I understand that optics is a German science and a German manufactory, I am a supporter of this idea. I can tell a lot about Leica. And as a tool, it helps me a lot in the photography that I do. I am almost invisible with this camera. People react positively to her because she is small, she is not aggressive and very quiet. Well, this is a reliable camera, very reliable.
I can't compete with her at night, or when there is little light. But I am so slightly comforted by the idea that a modern digital camera sees more than the human eye, so it is. And the film will more or less match.
A photo on my phone for me is a visual diary for memory and that's it. It is a tool that allows you to capture moments of life, share your thoughts and emotions, and simply explore the world around you. Mobile phones make photography accessible to everyone, regardless of experience level or budget. This breaks down barriers and allows everyone to tell their story through images.
Although many perceive photos taken on the phone as drafts, I believe that they have value in themselves. They are sincere, relaxed and often reflect reality more authentically than photos taken with a professional camera. The mobile is always with me, so I can capture the moment that happened immediately without losing any detail.
As an example, I can mention the photographer Dmitry Gavrish, who worked a lot for the American media. He lived in New York and created the photo book “Inshallah” during the war in Afghanistan. Interestingly, to shoot this book, he used not only a professional camera, but also an iPhone. He explained that the phone allowed him to be closer to people and events, to take more spontaneous and personal photos.
Photos on the phone are just a household thing and a household photo, nothing more.
Photo exhibitions are a kind of filter of what my photo should be. She may not be on the show, but she has to be so that she can be on it. You were today at the exhibition “Farewell Slavyanka”, where there are only 13 photos, and there may be 100 of them, for example. In space, it is small, but they have been made for more than 30 years.
This song appeared after the march was written. The march was written on the Balkan wars, that is, on the relation of Imperial Russia to the Balkans in 1912. And all the words were written after that.
It quickly became the soundtrack of the imperial encroachments of the Russian army.
Perhaps you remember that the train number 1 from the Kiev railway station, Kyiv-Moscow, departed under the march “Farewell Slavyanka”.
This song has radically changed its meaning: since the victory march in World War II, it has become an accompaniment to the modern aggression, genocide and total destruction that Russia is waging.
And if you now type in Google “Farewell Slavyanka” in Russian, then the first thing you will see is how Z military columns are driving in the direction of Ukraine under this march. It took on a completely different context.
This exhibition is part of the struggle against internal contradiction and acceptance of the new reality.
I photograph it because it happened to us. This is my country. And it's another question, if I were a different age, would I be sitting here. I think I would actually be at the front. Young people like me, unfortunately, are not taken yet. You know, Marushchenko once told me that he felt the transition from the age of 50 to 60 and after 60 was like he didn't need to take pictures anymore. And it's very, very personal for everyone. It's not just about photography, I think, really. And I feel the very act of photographing, and in general, what I do, just as it seemed at first. I'm just as curious, my eye sees the same way, I have hope. And people recognize my photos without seeing the signatures under them.
I hope that what I do now is not much, but it will have both meaning and power now and then.
Photography is such a preserved time. That is, time as such if it is felt from this photograph. We are not physicists, it is easier for us to talk about time, because if we touch the physical quantity, there are so many questions at once, what is time, or does it exist at all? So we will say the time, we will say the action that takes place, even if you do not see it, something hidden, it can all be in documentary photography. And what you do, if you are a photographer, is your specialty, that is, it has to have an image, it has to act. All together.
Documentary photography is an art in its extreme manifestations.
The meaning of photographing on film for me is that I control, that is, I print with my hands if possible.
Leica and black and white film are a great privilege that gives you time to think, to think. This is not a slowness, but a privilege. You are the owner of your time. You are not attached, especially when you compare how many of those who sat here with me and talked about their work in the war work, it is hard work. And then everything needs to be reset, edited. I have time. And printing, when I take a photo, when I take a picture, I already have an understanding of how it should be printed. And if the appearance of the film is just a routine, a typical routine, nothing interesting, you have to be neat, the solutions should be clean, the temperature should be as it should be, and the time is the same, how much it manifests itself there, how much it is fixed, how much it is washed. And when you print a photo, you work on the image. And every handprint can be done there, they are all numbered and I limit the reprints, but one from the other, if it is hand printed, will be a little different. Not for the worse or for the better, but just a little bit different. And this is uniqueness. Just uniqueness. And I love it. I love to print.
Freedom is effort. Absolute freedom does not exist. Something keeps us going anyway, something sets some kind of framework. Absolute freedom is that you were killed, you died, and that's it. This is freedom, perhaps.
I do what I want mostly. All these photos that you saw at the exhibition, no one sent me there, I left myself. It was my decision, my desire, I wanted to see, understand what was happening.
I don't know what will happen over time. I hope this is not a century war, as the war of the Kingdom of England and France was.
In 2015, at the Closer club, photographer from Magnum agency Abbas Attar gave an open lecture showing his photos on the screen. Then he was asked: “Why did you stop photographing conflicts?”. Abbas replied, “Because I can't run fast anymore,” and laughed, you know? I still can, because I run cross country three times a week, I'm not ashamed to be where I have to sometimes run fast with everything on you.
We are grateful Work.ua for supporting and assisting in strengthening the voices of Ukrainian documentary filmmakers.
Thank you.
Oleksandr Hlyadelov — Ukrainian documentary photographer, photojournalist.
As a photographer, he covered military conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan and Ukraine. Since 1997, he has been actively cooperating with the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres). Collaborates with international organizations: MSF, HRW, The Global Fund, UNAIDS, UNICEF.
Addresses social topics: war conflicts, humanitarian crises, homeless children, prisons, HIV/AIDS epidemics, tuberculosis and Hepatitis C, drug addiction. He does not consider himself a war photographer, although some of his robots are dedicated to wars and conflicts.
He consciously takes pictures with an analog camera on black and white film and prints his own photos in his home photo lab in Kyiv.
He was wounded twice in Moldova and in Donbas near Ilovaisk.
Awards and honors: Grand Prix of Ukrpresfoto-97 for the series of pictures “Abandoned Children”; Hasselblad Prize at the European Photography Competition in Vevey, Switzerland, Images'98; Mother Jones 2001 Medal of Excellence of the International Fund for Documentary Photography in San Francisco, USA; “Moving Walls 2002” of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York, USA. Winner of the Shevchenko Prize 2020 for the photo project “Carousel”.
He lives and works in Kyiv.
Elena Guseynova— Ukrainian writer, radio host, radio producer and moderator of the meeting. Since 2016, he has been working on Radio Culture (Social). She is currently the editor-in-chief of the Editorial Radio Theater and Literary Programs.
The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Marusya Maruzhenko
Site Manager: Vladislav Kuhar
Photos from the personal archives of Oleksandr Hlyadelov
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.
