Watch the full interview:
Danylo Pavlov: I think that foreigners have a qualitatively different approach to building a story. A person from abroad has two weeks to focus on something and make a story. And we are in this content all the time. The vast majority of our colleagues work in the news format, not because they are incapable of creating anything else, but because they are attached to our Ukrainian context and the war. And it's hard to combine two focuses at the same time.
Serhiy Korovainyi: Before this war, I never thought how important our work was. Russia is simply committing atrocities that would be unimaginable in the 21st century if we, our colleagues, hadn't gone to Bucha, Horenka, Makariv, and Trostianets after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region. People in Ukraine and abroad would not have believed that there were bodies of tortured people lying on the streets of a suburb of a major European capital if there were no photographers there. So we are doing essential work. And we have been working and we will keep working.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi: There are a lot of bureaucratic obstacles for journalists and photographers to get to the frontline. But I don't want to blame anyone, press officers often try very hard, to do everything, but this is not enough to avoid losing this information war.
Nowadays, Ukrainian photographers are rarely allowed to stay at the front for long periods of time. However, it is the long trips that produce real results, as we can see from Mariupol and the work of foreign journalists here.
Serhiy Krovainyi: In the East, everything depends on press officers and personal contacts. I have the feeling that our army is learning to work together on the move. To be honest, I have high hopes for Illarion Pavlyuk, who has taken over the Press and Information Department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. He is a journalist with combat experience, and I hope that he will establish work with the media, which was impossible before, and make it better for everyone.
Danylo Pavlov: A lot of photographers want to get access to the places where the battles are taking place. Sometimes you need a press officer to understand that you don't mean any harm, you want to make a story that is of high quality in the first place, you don't want to make a nice picture that doesn't look quite honest.
I can say that we cannot compete with The New York Times because Reporters is a very small media outlet in comparison.
But the frontline is not a safari for photographers.
I understand the desire to get closer and closer, I have it too, but stories should not just come from the frontline. We are surrounded by a lot of different problems and a lot of different stories that we can cover.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi:
War, like daily life, consists of a series of black and white moments. And sometimes they are very black, and sometimes they are very bright. It's just that these moments change very quickly.
Several things can happen in one day that either completely embarrass you, upset you or make you absolutely happy.
Sergey Korovainy: I was recently working with my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal on a selection of photos to apply to annual competitions. We made collective applications and I saw that my photos turned out to have more light, just physically, more light, more colors. I live here and I see this country as a living, breathing organism.
Maybe this is where I differ from my foreign colleagues at the Wall Street Journal. The fact that we see light where others may only see grief.
Daniil Pavlov: For some reason, I remember the New Year and the Christmas tree on an empty square in Bakhmut that we carried with the State Emergency Service and put up there to greet 2023.
It was a very happy moment, and then we came back and it was indescribably sad.
There is another good thing about war: you can feel a person in seconds, see really cool, clever people.
- Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Participants:
Sergiy Korovainy - Photojournalist and portrait photographer. He works with international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, Financial Times, and others. His documentary projects focus on the Russian-Ukrainian war, ecology, and various aspects of Ukrainian modernity.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi is a Ukrainian reporter and documentary photographer. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv. He works with Reuters.
He has been published in many Ukrainian publications (Ukrainska Pravda, Hromadske, NV, Reporters, and others) as well as in a number of foreign publications (Time, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Der Spiegel).
Danylo Pavlov is a documentary photographer from Ukraine. He is a photo editor at Reporters.media and a photographer for The Ukrainians.
Lina Zelenska - journalist, TV host and moderator of the meeting.
We are grateful to Work.ua for their support and help in amplifying Ukrainian voices.
Watch the full interview:
Danylo Pavlov: I think that foreigners have a qualitatively different approach to building a story. A person from abroad has two weeks to focus on something and make a story. And we are in this content all the time. The vast majority of our colleagues work in the news format, not because they are incapable of creating anything else, but because they are attached to our Ukrainian context and the war. And it's hard to combine two focuses at the same time.
Serhiy Korovainyi: Before this war, I never thought how important our work was. Russia is simply committing atrocities that would be unimaginable in the 21st century if we, our colleagues, hadn't gone to Bucha, Horenka, Makariv, and Trostianets after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region. People in Ukraine and abroad would not have believed that there were bodies of tortured people lying on the streets of a suburb of a major European capital if there were no photographers there. So we are doing essential work. And we have been working and we will keep working.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi: There are a lot of bureaucratic obstacles for journalists and photographers to get to the frontline. But I don't want to blame anyone, press officers often try very hard, to do everything, but this is not enough to avoid losing this information war.
Nowadays, Ukrainian photographers are rarely allowed to stay at the front for long periods of time. However, it is the long trips that produce real results, as we can see from Mariupol and the work of foreign journalists here.
Serhiy Krovainyi: In the East, everything depends on press officers and personal contacts. I have the feeling that our army is learning to work together on the move. To be honest, I have high hopes for Illarion Pavlyuk, who has taken over the Press and Information Department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. He is a journalist with combat experience, and I hope that he will establish work with the media, which was impossible before, and make it better for everyone.
Danylo Pavlov: A lot of photographers want to get access to the places where the battles are taking place. Sometimes you need a press officer to understand that you don't mean any harm, you want to make a story that is of high quality in the first place, you don't want to make a nice picture that doesn't look quite honest.
I can say that we cannot compete with The New York Times because Reporters is a very small media outlet in comparison.
But the frontline is not a safari for photographers.
I understand the desire to get closer and closer, I have it too, but stories should not just come from the frontline. We are surrounded by a lot of different problems and a lot of different stories that we can cover.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi:
War, like daily life, consists of a series of black and white moments. And sometimes they are very black, and sometimes they are very bright. It's just that these moments change very quickly.
Several things can happen in one day that either completely embarrass you, upset you or make you absolutely happy.
Sergey Korovainy: I was recently working with my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal on a selection of photos to apply to annual competitions. We made collective applications and I saw that my photos turned out to have more light, just physically, more light, more colors. I live here and I see this country as a living, breathing organism.
Maybe this is where I differ from my foreign colleagues at the Wall Street Journal. The fact that we see light where others may only see grief.
Daniil Pavlov: For some reason, I remember the New Year and the Christmas tree on an empty square in Bakhmut that we carried with the State Emergency Service and put up there to greet 2023.
It was a very happy moment, and then we came back and it was indescribably sad.
There is another good thing about war: you can feel a person in seconds, see really cool, clever people.
- Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Participants:
Sergiy Korovainy - Photojournalist and portrait photographer. He works with international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian, Financial Times, and others. His documentary projects focus on the Russian-Ukrainian war, ecology, and various aspects of Ukrainian modernity.
Viacheslav Ratynskyi is a Ukrainian reporter and documentary photographer. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv. He works with Reuters.
He has been published in many Ukrainian publications (Ukrainska Pravda, Hromadske, NV, Reporters, and others) as well as in a number of foreign publications (Time, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Der Spiegel).
Danylo Pavlov is a documentary photographer from Ukraine. He is a photo editor at Reporters.media and a photographer for The Ukrainians.
Lina Zelenska - journalist, TV host and moderator of the meeting.
We are grateful to Work.ua for their support and help in amplifying Ukrainian voices.
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.
