We talk about the project Temporary Home (or Dormitory), jet photography during the war, photography education in France, and the dream photo with a new member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers, Daria Svertilova from Odesa.
I position myself as a photographer who works on the edge of documentary and artistic photography.
It's a long story. I was actually interested in photography when I was a teenager. I was in middle school, I was 13 years old. DSLR cameras were becoming popular back then. Some of my classmates started taking pictures, and I thought I was interested in it too. I went to a photography club in Odesa and started taking portraits of my classmates. They liked it too and encouraged me to continue, saying that I was good at it. And it all started with that. Then I formed a small community in Odesa with two friends. We got together and talked about projects, looked at the work of foreign photographers. This went on throughout high school and during my time as a student. While studying philology, I realized that I wanted to focus my attention on photography in the future, so after studying in Odesa, I entered the School of Decorative Arts in Paris. There I studied at the Photo and Video Department.
You could say that (laughs).
I started filming the Temporary Home series in 2019. At that time, I had been studying in France for two years. It all started with a spontaneous idea and an experiment. I didn't know that this idea would turn into a long-term photo series.
Being abroad made me realize that there could be another kind of photography. I mean, when I was in Odesa, I didn't have the same access to certain exhibitions and books. We still have a slightly different context. And it seems to me that being there gave me both distance and an understanding that this topic can be interesting not only to me. When I was studying in Odesa, I didn't live in a dormitory, and none of my university friends lived there either. I always wanted to go there, but I never had the chance. Then I came back to Odesa from France for the summer vacation and had this idea. I started looking for someone who lived in a hostel. At that time, I was also studying away from home and was experiencing independent living for the first time.
I was interested in how students in Ukraine go through this stage of growing up. In addition, I think that this project was partly a reflection on the events on the Maidan. I was a first-year student when the Revolution of Dignity began, and it was students who became the driving force on the Maidan. I was very impressed by how young people reacted to what was happening in the country. And I really wanted to show young Ukrainians: how different they are and how they live.
In fact, there are dormitories everywhere. In Europe, they look the same, mostly very neat and minimalist. I think that Ukrainian dorms have more eclecticism and some unexpected details. You never know what you're going to come across, in the rooms or in the buildings themselves. It is true that our dormitories are a relic of the Soviet era. That is, they have not changed much since they were built. Now some dormitories are being renovated according to the European model, but most remain as they were. It is very noticeable that students have a lot of references to American or European culture: music, posters, inscriptions in English, etc. In other words, the Soviet Union is already in the past, but it is still present somewhere in the background. Whether we like it or not, it is still part of our heritage.
For me, the Dormitory project is primarily about people. It's about students, about how they live in these places, how they equip their rooms. And I have heard different reviews. Mostly positive. But I'm calm about the fact that not everyone can like my work. Once - it was before the Russian full-scale invasion - a Hungarian news site posted my series of works. And someone wrote a comment: “Well, this is a very romanticized picture. There are not enough dead toilets and cockroaches there.” This suggests that this is exactly how our Eastern European post-Soviet space is used to seeing. I had no goal to aestheticize, but I also had no desire to speculate on how people from abroad would like to see these places. For me, the dormitories are about youth, hopes, dreams, romance, friendship, emancipation, and finding yourself. All of this is more important than broken toilets.
The place where I studied has the status of a higher education institution, a school of arts (a state institution). It is not a university in the classical sense. That is, I had to pass a competition to get in. Entering this school was an event that really changed my life, I was 21 at the time.
The school gave me many things, both negative and positive. The positive thing is that I learned to defend my point of view. At the beginning of my studies, there were many challenges, for example, when a teacher tells you that an idea doesn't work, everything is wrong, and he doesn't tell you how to do it right, because, according to him, I had to come to this understanding myself. Of course, the difference in mentality is also among the difficulties. However, this difficult experience and many trials there shaped me. On the positive side, the school gave me a community. Thanks to my French friends, I was able to integrate and at the same time get to know the cultural context in general and understand how the art of photography works in France.
Yes, it's a very cool experience. I have no regrets at all. In fact, I don't even regret my first education in Odesa, because any education gives you something. My first degree was in Romance and Germanic philology, and I was supposed to be a teacher of English.
In fact, there is a lot to say about what happens in photography in the context of war. I think it's a kind of reactive photography. There are events, and with them pain and trauma. I want to share this and I want to react to it. My photography can't be not about the war, because I'm from here, it's also my trauma. Even if I live partially abroad, I still identify myself as a Ukrainian, and this is my story, too.
At first, I also had this condition called “survivor's guilt” because I was not in Ukraine but in France when the full-scale war began. And of course, in the first months I couldn't film at all. Then the French press began to offer me some stories related to Ukraine, which helped me somehow survive that period. For the first couple of months of the great war, I was not physically in Ukraine, but I watched the activities of our photographers, how they recorded the tragic events. I did not understand where my place was in this context. I went to Ukraine in the summer of 2022 and saw the de-occupied Kyiv region with my own eyes.
Like any tragic event, war causes a surge in the creative spheres. A lot is happening in art now. People are trying to sublimate the tragedy. What I see is that we don't have a distance yet. That's why it's still difficult to make conceptual art. Because time has to pass for analysis and reflection. And now we are just living in all this: every day is anxiety, and you don't know where it might hit the next moment. These are, of course, all very strong experiences. That's why, in my opinion, our art and our photography are mostly reactive, they capture the reality here and now.
In fact, I think it's a complex inspiration. I am inspired by the people around me. Being in Ukraine, I see with my own eyes what is happening. I fully associate myself with this context. When a Russian missile hit Okhmatdyt, I saw how many people came to help. How many people joined in. It is impressive. Everyone does it because you can't help but do it. And in fact, sometimes it is really hard mentally. I had moments when I thought that only journalistic photography makes sense now, that everything else has less power. And then I remember some moments when, for example, people came up to me and said: “I looked at the photos of the students and left with tears in my eyes, because these young people... they are in Ukraine now.” Or, for example, the reaction to the photo of our soldier Hanna Vasyk, which was on the poster of the exhibition in Belgium. There is a small Ukrainian flag in the photo. Then people came up to me and said: “Tell us the story of this woman! Who is she? What is happening to her now?” Then I realized that you can talk about the war with “calm” photos and it is also effective.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that I really want to take photos in Crimea. I don't have any specific image in my head. I have thought about Crimea many times since the beginning of the great war. It's a place I associate with my childhood. In my imagination it is summer, sunny, green, blue. In my mind, this place is like Eden. I realize that this is not true, because, first of all, these are fragments of a child's perception. Secondly, Crimea has definitely changed over the years. And I would really like to go there when we get Crimea back. I would just like to shoot there. I don't have any specific idea yet, but I feel like I would really like to make photographs there.
Daria Svertilova is a Ukrainian photographer originally from Odesa, who lives and works between Kyiv and Paris. She graduated from the Master's program in Photography and Video at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris, France) in 2023. Finalist of the Palm Photo Prize 2022.
Daria's Instagram.
The material was created with the support of The Fritt Ord Foundation.
We talk about the project Temporary Home (or Dormitory), jet photography during the war, photography education in France, and the dream photo with a new member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers, Daria Svertilova from Odesa.
I position myself as a photographer who works on the edge of documentary and artistic photography.
It's a long story. I was actually interested in photography when I was a teenager. I was in middle school, I was 13 years old. DSLR cameras were becoming popular back then. Some of my classmates started taking pictures, and I thought I was interested in it too. I went to a photography club in Odesa and started taking portraits of my classmates. They liked it too and encouraged me to continue, saying that I was good at it. And it all started with that. Then I formed a small community in Odesa with two friends. We got together and talked about projects, looked at the work of foreign photographers. This went on throughout high school and during my time as a student. While studying philology, I realized that I wanted to focus my attention on photography in the future, so after studying in Odesa, I entered the School of Decorative Arts in Paris. There I studied at the Photo and Video Department.
You could say that (laughs).
I started filming the Temporary Home series in 2019. At that time, I had been studying in France for two years. It all started with a spontaneous idea and an experiment. I didn't know that this idea would turn into a long-term photo series.
Being abroad made me realize that there could be another kind of photography. I mean, when I was in Odesa, I didn't have the same access to certain exhibitions and books. We still have a slightly different context. And it seems to me that being there gave me both distance and an understanding that this topic can be interesting not only to me. When I was studying in Odesa, I didn't live in a dormitory, and none of my university friends lived there either. I always wanted to go there, but I never had the chance. Then I came back to Odesa from France for the summer vacation and had this idea. I started looking for someone who lived in a hostel. At that time, I was also studying away from home and was experiencing independent living for the first time.
I was interested in how students in Ukraine go through this stage of growing up. In addition, I think that this project was partly a reflection on the events on the Maidan. I was a first-year student when the Revolution of Dignity began, and it was students who became the driving force on the Maidan. I was very impressed by how young people reacted to what was happening in the country. And I really wanted to show young Ukrainians: how different they are and how they live.
In fact, there are dormitories everywhere. In Europe, they look the same, mostly very neat and minimalist. I think that Ukrainian dorms have more eclecticism and some unexpected details. You never know what you're going to come across, in the rooms or in the buildings themselves. It is true that our dormitories are a relic of the Soviet era. That is, they have not changed much since they were built. Now some dormitories are being renovated according to the European model, but most remain as they were. It is very noticeable that students have a lot of references to American or European culture: music, posters, inscriptions in English, etc. In other words, the Soviet Union is already in the past, but it is still present somewhere in the background. Whether we like it or not, it is still part of our heritage.
For me, the Dormitory project is primarily about people. It's about students, about how they live in these places, how they equip their rooms. And I have heard different reviews. Mostly positive. But I'm calm about the fact that not everyone can like my work. Once - it was before the Russian full-scale invasion - a Hungarian news site posted my series of works. And someone wrote a comment: “Well, this is a very romanticized picture. There are not enough dead toilets and cockroaches there.” This suggests that this is exactly how our Eastern European post-Soviet space is used to seeing. I had no goal to aestheticize, but I also had no desire to speculate on how people from abroad would like to see these places. For me, the dormitories are about youth, hopes, dreams, romance, friendship, emancipation, and finding yourself. All of this is more important than broken toilets.
The place where I studied has the status of a higher education institution, a school of arts (a state institution). It is not a university in the classical sense. That is, I had to pass a competition to get in. Entering this school was an event that really changed my life, I was 21 at the time.
The school gave me many things, both negative and positive. The positive thing is that I learned to defend my point of view. At the beginning of my studies, there were many challenges, for example, when a teacher tells you that an idea doesn't work, everything is wrong, and he doesn't tell you how to do it right, because, according to him, I had to come to this understanding myself. Of course, the difference in mentality is also among the difficulties. However, this difficult experience and many trials there shaped me. On the positive side, the school gave me a community. Thanks to my French friends, I was able to integrate and at the same time get to know the cultural context in general and understand how the art of photography works in France.
Yes, it's a very cool experience. I have no regrets at all. In fact, I don't even regret my first education in Odesa, because any education gives you something. My first degree was in Romance and Germanic philology, and I was supposed to be a teacher of English.
In fact, there is a lot to say about what happens in photography in the context of war. I think it's a kind of reactive photography. There are events, and with them pain and trauma. I want to share this and I want to react to it. My photography can't be not about the war, because I'm from here, it's also my trauma. Even if I live partially abroad, I still identify myself as a Ukrainian, and this is my story, too.
At first, I also had this condition called “survivor's guilt” because I was not in Ukraine but in France when the full-scale war began. And of course, in the first months I couldn't film at all. Then the French press began to offer me some stories related to Ukraine, which helped me somehow survive that period. For the first couple of months of the great war, I was not physically in Ukraine, but I watched the activities of our photographers, how they recorded the tragic events. I did not understand where my place was in this context. I went to Ukraine in the summer of 2022 and saw the de-occupied Kyiv region with my own eyes.
Like any tragic event, war causes a surge in the creative spheres. A lot is happening in art now. People are trying to sublimate the tragedy. What I see is that we don't have a distance yet. That's why it's still difficult to make conceptual art. Because time has to pass for analysis and reflection. And now we are just living in all this: every day is anxiety, and you don't know where it might hit the next moment. These are, of course, all very strong experiences. That's why, in my opinion, our art and our photography are mostly reactive, they capture the reality here and now.
In fact, I think it's a complex inspiration. I am inspired by the people around me. Being in Ukraine, I see with my own eyes what is happening. I fully associate myself with this context. When a Russian missile hit Okhmatdyt, I saw how many people came to help. How many people joined in. It is impressive. Everyone does it because you can't help but do it. And in fact, sometimes it is really hard mentally. I had moments when I thought that only journalistic photography makes sense now, that everything else has less power. And then I remember some moments when, for example, people came up to me and said: “I looked at the photos of the students and left with tears in my eyes, because these young people... they are in Ukraine now.” Or, for example, the reaction to the photo of our soldier Hanna Vasyk, which was on the poster of the exhibition in Belgium. There is a small Ukrainian flag in the photo. Then people came up to me and said: “Tell us the story of this woman! Who is she? What is happening to her now?” Then I realized that you can talk about the war with “calm” photos and it is also effective.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that I really want to take photos in Crimea. I don't have any specific image in my head. I have thought about Crimea many times since the beginning of the great war. It's a place I associate with my childhood. In my imagination it is summer, sunny, green, blue. In my mind, this place is like Eden. I realize that this is not true, because, first of all, these are fragments of a child's perception. Secondly, Crimea has definitely changed over the years. And I would really like to go there when we get Crimea back. I would just like to shoot there. I don't have any specific idea yet, but I feel like I would really like to make photographs there.
Daria Svertilova is a Ukrainian photographer originally from Odesa, who lives and works between Kyiv and Paris. She graduated from the Master's program in Photography and Video at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris, France) in 2023. Finalist of the Palm Photo Prize 2022.
Daria's Instagram.
The material was created with the support of The Fritt Ord Foundation.
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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