These women in yellow scarves, sitting on benches near their homes by the road, are not so much unheard Cassandras as they are unrecognized.
My grandmother scrapes the remnants of soap from the dish on the sink, pressing it together in her cracked palm, then removes the lid from an old "Halka" coffee jar and adds the soap to a collection of other small, discarded pieces. "Why do you do that, Grandma?" I ask as a very little girl. "So they won’t be lonely?"
The world, as I perceive it then, is still one where everything is not just alive, but secretly so, hiding intentionally from my sight so that I may discover and explore it. "Because when the war starts, everything will be gone," Grandma replies.
Her daughter, my mother, can't explain to me why she too gathers small pieces of sticky soap into the same glass jar, she just does, and that's that. By the age of ten, I realized my mother simply knew nothing about the future, and by twenty-seven, I understood that not knowing anything, she moved toward it relentlessly.
Back in those distant days of childhood, my father used to advise me not to be surprised by the peculiarities of the women in our family, and especially not to listen to old grandmothers. Seventeen years later, from the trenches in the midst of war, my father no longer had any advice for me.
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This village in the Sumy region, near the Ukrainian-Russian border, is in the first week of the Kursk operation. Ukrainian military vehicles are constantly moving towards Russia, while guided bombs fly from Russia, with nothing stopping them. An elderly woman in a yellow headscarf sits at the edge of her yard by the road, watching military vehicles pass by. This photo was taken by Vyacheslav Ratynskyi, and fortunately, he spoke with the woman, which gave us her story.
She is no longer just an elderly woman in a yellow headscarf as war rushes past her. Instead, she becomes a woman on the brink of a lifetime of experiences, with the war rushing not just past her but through her and everywhere around her. According to the woman, she is 88 years old, and the photographer instinctively guessed her name – she must be Maria. She recalls that during World War II and for some time after, trenches and dugouts lined this very road where she now sits, just as the military vehicles do today.
It’s tempting to imagine that Maria has sat here her entire life. But no, during that first war, she was a child and survived it in a nearby village. Yet, if we turn to literature and metaphor, then yes, in a way, she has been sitting here all her life.
There is something about these women at the edge of experience, of countries, of centuries—whether under fire or under a cross—that feels like the unrecognized Cassandras. Some are spoken to, while others are never listened to. But Maria, the woman by the road where the war has lingered for so long, tell us, when will it end? "Never."
And in these unrecognized Cassandras, there is something of simple women.
Text: Vira Kuryko
Photo: Vyacheslav Ratynskyi
These women in yellow scarves, sitting on benches near their homes by the road, are not so much unheard Cassandras as they are unrecognized.
My grandmother scrapes the remnants of soap from the dish on the sink, pressing it together in her cracked palm, then removes the lid from an old "Halka" coffee jar and adds the soap to a collection of other small, discarded pieces. "Why do you do that, Grandma?" I ask as a very little girl. "So they won’t be lonely?"
The world, as I perceive it then, is still one where everything is not just alive, but secretly so, hiding intentionally from my sight so that I may discover and explore it. "Because when the war starts, everything will be gone," Grandma replies.
Her daughter, my mother, can't explain to me why she too gathers small pieces of sticky soap into the same glass jar, she just does, and that's that. By the age of ten, I realized my mother simply knew nothing about the future, and by twenty-seven, I understood that not knowing anything, she moved toward it relentlessly.
Back in those distant days of childhood, my father used to advise me not to be surprised by the peculiarities of the women in our family, and especially not to listen to old grandmothers. Seventeen years later, from the trenches in the midst of war, my father no longer had any advice for me.
This village in the Sumy region, near the Ukrainian-Russian border, is in the first week of the Kursk operation. Ukrainian military vehicles are constantly moving towards Russia, while guided bombs fly from Russia, with nothing stopping them. An elderly woman in a yellow headscarf sits at the edge of her yard by the road, watching military vehicles pass by. This photo was taken by Vyacheslav Ratynskyi, and fortunately, he spoke with the woman, which gave us her story.
She is no longer just an elderly woman in a yellow headscarf as war rushes past her. Instead, she becomes a woman on the brink of a lifetime of experiences, with the war rushing not just past her but through her and everywhere around her. According to the woman, she is 88 years old, and the photographer instinctively guessed her name – she must be Maria. She recalls that during World War II and for some time after, trenches and dugouts lined this very road where she now sits, just as the military vehicles do today.
It’s tempting to imagine that Maria has sat here her entire life. But no, during that first war, she was a child and survived it in a nearby village. Yet, if we turn to literature and metaphor, then yes, in a way, she has been sitting here all her life.
There is something about these women at the edge of experience, of countries, of centuries—whether under fire or under a cross—that feels like the unrecognized Cassandras. Some are spoken to, while others are never listened to. But Maria, the woman by the road where the war has lingered for so long, tell us, when will it end? "Never."
And in these unrecognized Cassandras, there is something of simple women.
Text: Vira Kuryko
Photo: Vyacheslav Ratynskyi
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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