We can document the moment and document the consequences, and not just the next day, but everything that happens afterwards, everything that the moment we documented spills over and turns into.
Authors, photographers, illustrators-anyone who testifies to the reality of their own cities or regions shows this reality in a more restrained way. When you enter a city that has just been shelled, or a city that is shrinking every day under the onslaught of the front, the eye naturally catches something striking, something bulky and obvious, even without a metaphor. In the eyes of local documentary filmmakers, there is much more simplicity, unpretentious ordinariness, which the reader, listener, or viewer may not immediately grasp. After all, who hasn't seen the cracks and pierced through the house? Especially in cities like Kherson or Kharkiv. But in addition to the falling of shells, there are moments when neither a shell nor a rocket flies. There are seconds when people play chess on a bench. And even seconds when people are not boarding up windows. In addition to the moment of loss, there is the permanence of loss.
This photo was taken by Kherson-based photographer Ivan Antipenko after another nighttime artillery shelling in the first weeks of November. Ivan heard the explosions from his house, as he hears most shelling. This one happened nearby. Perhaps there was not even a kilometer between Ivan and the impact. Perhaps if some of his non-local photographer colleagues had spent the night in his apartment that night, they would have gone there immediately. But Ivan was alone, and, let me assume, he allowed himself to sleep in and went there during the day.
Utilities were already working on the site. On one of the balconies, he saw four young men smoking, joking, and laughing at the jokes. Ivan Antypenko calls it a rather common thing: to stand there and make fatalistic jokes about what happens here every day. Just laughing and smoking.
Then Ivan saw one of the guys move to another room of the damaged apartment, the one where the shell hit, and just sat down to smoke in this hole. We don't know if it was even his room. Or the room of people he knew. Or maybe he didn't. This is just another moment of Kherson's everyday life.
“People live, smoke, laugh, ride trolleybuses, go to work. And at night you are shelled and you go to help, because it is the apartment of your friend or your mother's friend, or anyone whose house you now have the keys to in your pocket. Many people have left here, leaving their keys with someone: you need to water the flowers sometimes,” Ivan says. Watering the flowers or patching up a hole that a shell had pierced.
Ivan and I are talking from the perspective of two people who are very attached to the region about working in places you know well: do we sometimes oversimplify the picture by leaving too much context in ourselves? When I choose not to describe the ruins of Chernihiv over and over again, do I make the city better or worse? Can we sleep through the shelling of Kherson today or not? Do we have more room for maneuver when we are always on the ground or do we not have any room at all?
When, in the first month after the deblockade of Chernihiv, my foreign colleagues once again exposed me to the ruins and asked me what the situation in the city was like, I answered something like this: “Well, yesterday I called a taxi. So, the taxi drivers who know how to end the war have returned to the city, so I suspect that everything is getting better.” My colleagues from Spain didn't really understand my joke and, after pausing the recording, asked me to speak a little more seriously and anxiously. Today, my foreign colleagues don't look at me with astonished eyes when I tell them stories like this about Chernihiv, but laugh with me.
Has the world seen enough broken windows? Who else should we show our cracks to?
Photo: Ivan Antipenko
Text: Vira Kuriko
We can document the moment and document the consequences, and not just the next day, but everything that happens afterwards, everything that the moment we documented spills over and turns into.
Authors, photographers, illustrators-anyone who testifies to the reality of their own cities or regions shows this reality in a more restrained way. When you enter a city that has just been shelled, or a city that is shrinking every day under the onslaught of the front, the eye naturally catches something striking, something bulky and obvious, even without a metaphor. In the eyes of local documentary filmmakers, there is much more simplicity, unpretentious ordinariness, which the reader, listener, or viewer may not immediately grasp. After all, who hasn't seen the cracks and pierced through the house? Especially in cities like Kherson or Kharkiv. But in addition to the falling of shells, there are moments when neither a shell nor a rocket flies. There are seconds when people play chess on a bench. And even seconds when people are not boarding up windows. In addition to the moment of loss, there is the permanence of loss.
This photo was taken by Kherson-based photographer Ivan Antipenko after another nighttime artillery shelling in the first weeks of November. Ivan heard the explosions from his house, as he hears most shelling. This one happened nearby. Perhaps there was not even a kilometer between Ivan and the impact. Perhaps if some of his non-local photographer colleagues had spent the night in his apartment that night, they would have gone there immediately. But Ivan was alone, and, let me assume, he allowed himself to sleep in and went there during the day.
Utilities were already working on the site. On one of the balconies, he saw four young men smoking, joking, and laughing at the jokes. Ivan Antypenko calls it a rather common thing: to stand there and make fatalistic jokes about what happens here every day. Just laughing and smoking.
Then Ivan saw one of the guys move to another room of the damaged apartment, the one where the shell hit, and just sat down to smoke in this hole. We don't know if it was even his room. Or the room of people he knew. Or maybe he didn't. This is just another moment of Kherson's everyday life.
“People live, smoke, laugh, ride trolleybuses, go to work. And at night you are shelled and you go to help, because it is the apartment of your friend or your mother's friend, or anyone whose house you now have the keys to in your pocket. Many people have left here, leaving their keys with someone: you need to water the flowers sometimes,” Ivan says. Watering the flowers or patching up a hole that a shell had pierced.
Ivan and I are talking from the perspective of two people who are very attached to the region about working in places you know well: do we sometimes oversimplify the picture by leaving too much context in ourselves? When I choose not to describe the ruins of Chernihiv over and over again, do I make the city better or worse? Can we sleep through the shelling of Kherson today or not? Do we have more room for maneuver when we are always on the ground or do we not have any room at all?
When, in the first month after the deblockade of Chernihiv, my foreign colleagues once again exposed me to the ruins and asked me what the situation in the city was like, I answered something like this: “Well, yesterday I called a taxi. So, the taxi drivers who know how to end the war have returned to the city, so I suspect that everything is getting better.” My colleagues from Spain didn't really understand my joke and, after pausing the recording, asked me to speak a little more seriously and anxiously. Today, my foreign colleagues don't look at me with astonished eyes when I tell them stories like this about Chernihiv, but laugh with me.
Has the world seen enough broken windows? Who else should we show our cracks to?
Photo: Ivan Antipenko
Text: Vira Kuriko
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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