“My photography cannot be about anything other than war.” New UAAP member Daria Svertilova on her projects, reflections, and dream photos

About the project “Temporary House” (or “Hostel”), jet photography during the war, photo education in France, dream photography — we talk about this and more with the new member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers, Dariya Svertilova.

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• Daria, who are you? Who do you position yourself with?
  

I position myself as a photographer working on the border of documentary and artistic photography.

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• Where did your love of photography begin?
  

It's a long story. I was really interested in photography when I was a teenager. I was in high school, I was 13 years old. Then SLR cameras became popular. One of my classmates started shooting, I thought I was interested in it too. I went to a photo circle in Odessa and began to make portraits for my classmates. They liked it too and they encouraged me to continue, saying that I was doing well. And it all started with that. Then I formed such a small community in Odessa with two friends. We gathered together and talked about projects, looked at the works of foreign photographers. This was the case during his studies in high school and during his studies as a student. While studying philology, I realized that I wanted to focus my attention on photography in the future, and so after studying in Odessa, I entered the School of Decorative Arts in Paris. There I studied at the Faculty of Photography and Video.

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• That is, we can say that you are in the list of those rare Ukrainian photographers who have a specialized education?
  

You can also say so (laughs).

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• Tell us about the project “Temporary House”? When did you implement it and what did you want to say about it?
  

I started shooting the Temporary House series in 2019. At that time, I had been studying in France for two years. It all started with a spontaneous idea and experiment. I did not know that this idea would be formed into a long-term photo series.

Being abroad gave me the understanding that there could be another photograph. That is, when I was in Odessa, I did not have such access to certain exhibitions and books. We still have a slightly different context. And it seems to me that being there gave both distance and understanding that this topic could be of interest not only to me. When I studied in Odessa, I did not live in a hostel and none of my university friends lived there either. I always wanted to go there, but there was no opportunity. Then I returned from France for the summer holidays in Odessa and I had such an idea. I started looking for someone who lives in a hostel. At that time, I, too, was studying away from home and had the experience of independent living for the first time.

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I was interested in how this stage of growing up is experienced by students in Ukraine. In addition, it seems to me that this project was partly a reflection after the events on the Maidan. I was studying in my first year when the Revolution of Dignity began, and it was the 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 and Ukrainians: how different they are and how they live.

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• How did the foreign audience perceive your project?
  

In fact, hostels are everywhere. In Europe they look the same, for the most part very neat and minimalist. It seems to me that in Ukrainian hostels there is more eclecticism and some unexpected details. You never know what you will come across, in the rooms or the buildings themselves. And indeed, that our hostels are a relic of the Soviet times. That is, they have not changed much since they were built. Now some hostels are updated according to the European model, but most remain as they were. It is very noticeable that students have many references of American or European culture: music, posters, inscriptions in English, etc. That is, the Soviet Union is already in the past, but somewhere in the background it is still present. Whether we like it or not, it is still part of our heritage.

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For me, the “Hostel” project is the first thing about people. It is about students, about how they inhabit these places, equip their rooms. And I heard different reviews. Mostly positive. But I am calm about the fact that not everyone can like robots. Once — this was even before the Russian full-scale invasion — a Hungarian news site started my series of works. And there someone wrote a comment: “Well this is a very romanticized picture. There are not enough dead toilets and cockroaches.” This suggests that this is how we used to see our Eastern European post-Soviet space. I had no goal to aesthetize, but there was no desire to speculate on how people from abroad would like to see these places. For me, hostels are about youth, hope, dreams, romance, friendship, emancipation, finding yourself. All this is more important than dead toilets.

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• Tell us more about your specialized education in Paris? Do you regret this experience? Still, it's learning a foreign language, it's a great effort, it's sessions.
  

The place where I studied has the status of a higher school, it is an art school (public institution). This is not a university in the classical sense. That is, in order to enter, I went through a contest. Entering this school was an event that really changed my life, I was 21 years old at the time.

The school has given a lot of both negative and positive things. The positive thing is that I learned to defend my point of view. At the beginning of the training there were many trials, for example, when the teacher tells you that the idea does not work, everything is wrong, and how right, he does not say, because, according to him, I had to come to this understanding myself. Of course, among the difficulties is the difference in mentality. However, this difficult experience and many trials there shaped me. On the positive side: the school gave to the community. Thanks to my French friends, I was able to integrate and at the same time better know the cultural context in general and understand how the art of photography works in France.

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Yes, this is a very cool experience. I don't regret it at all. In general, even about the first education in Odessa, I also do not regret, because any education gives something. My first education was Romano-Germanic philology, I should have been a teacher or teacher of English.

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• How did your photo change during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine?
  

In fact, there is a lot to be said about what happens in photography in the context of war. This is what I think is a reactive photo. There are events, and with them pain and trauma. I want to share this and I want to react to it. My photo can't help but be about the war, because I'm from here, it's also my trauma. Even if I live partly abroad, I still identify myself as Ukrainian, still this is also my story.

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At first, I also had this condition, which is called “survivor's guilt”, because I was not in Ukraine, but in France, when a full-scale war began. And of course, in the first few months I couldn't shoot at all. Then the French press began to offer me some stories related to Ukraine, it helped 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 as they recorded the tragic events. I don't know where my place is in this context. I went to Ukraine in the summer of 2022, saw the de-occupied Kiev region with my own eyes.

Like any tragic event, war causes a surge in creative spheres. There is a lot going on in art now. People try to sublimate the tragedy. What I see is that we have no distance yet. Because of this, it is still difficult to do conceptual art. Because it must take time for analysis and reflection. And now we just live in it all: every day anxiety, and you don't know where it might hit the next moment. These are, of course, all very strong experiences. Therefore, in my opinion, our art and our photography are mostly reactive, they capture reality here and now.

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• Where do you get the energy, inspiration and motivation to have the strength to continue to do something, act, create?
  

In fact, I think it's a complex inspiration. Inspire the people around. When I am in Ukraine, I see with my own eyes what is happening. I associate myself completely with this context. When a Russian rocket hit Okhmatdyt, I saw how many people had come there to help. How many people joined. It's impressive. Everyone does it because you can't help but do it. And in fact, sometimes it is really very difficult mentally. I have had moments when I thought that only journalistic photography now makes sense, that everything else has less power. And then I remember some moments when, for example, people approached me and said, “I looked at photos of students and came out with tears in my eyes, because these young people... they are now in Ukraine.” Or, for example, the reaction to the photo of our military Anna Vasik, which was on the poster of the exhibition in Belgium. In the photo there is a small Ukrainian flag. Then people came up to me and said, “Tell us the story of this woman! Who is she? What's wrong with her now?” Then I realized that you can talk about war with “calm” photos and this is also effective.

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• Is there a photo you would like to take? Which one do you dream to do? And why is this photo a dream?
  

The first thing that comes to mind: I really want to take pictures in Crimea. There is no specific such picture in my head. I have thought about Crimea many times since the beginning of the Great War. This is a place that I associate with childhood. In my imagination, it is summer, sunny, green, blue. In my head, this place is like Eden. I understand that this is not true, because, first of all, these are passages of children's perception. Secondly, that Crimea has definitely changed over the years. And I would really like to go there when we return to Crimea. I would just like to post there. I don't have any specific idea yet, but I feel like I would love to take pictures there.

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Daria Svertilova — Ukrainian photographer from Odessa, who lives and works between Kyiv and Paris. She completed her master's program in photography and video at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris, France) in 2023. Finalist of the Palm Photo Prize 2022.InstagramDaryi.

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Material created with support The Free Word Foundation.