Oleksiy Chistotin on the landscapes of war and black-and-white film photographs

Oleksiy Chistotin is a new member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers. In this conversation, he talks about his path in film photography, his experience of shooting in the de-occupied territories, creating art books and working with archives. He also shares his reflections on the war, mobilization, and the support he finds in Kharkiv.

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Starting with film: how it all began

Oleksiy Chistotin started taking pictures with film in 2019 after his digital camera broke down. The forced replacement of the equipment was the beginning of a new hobby, which eventually grew into a conscious photographic path.

“I tried it, and probably from the very first reel of film I had a feeling that I was going to do it for a long time,” Oleksii recalls.

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Since then, photography has become a regular practice. Oleksii began to delve deeper into the process: he experimented, studied techniques, observed light and composition.

His first photographs were simple, as the photographer himself says: street scenes, portraits of friends, everyday scenes. At first he shot with color film, but quickly switched to black and white. Oleksii says it was not because of fashion, but because this format was closer to his spirit: "They were ordinary film photos. They were nothing special. But it was with them that everything started."

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From chaos to focus: how he became serious

Photography gradually ceased to be just a hobby for Oleksiy Chistotin. At first, he was just looking for himself - trying, rejecting, and looking again. But over time, he realized that some things were closer to him than others.

"I started to give up everything that didn't arouse my interest. I was not interested in shooting 'for the picture', I wanted something more. At some point, only black and white film and Kharkiv remained. It was very personal - an attempt to capture my city the way I feel it,” says Oleksiy.

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In 2020, Oleksii became interested in the work of the Kharkiv School of Photography. This cultural phenomenon made a deep impression on him, Oleksii admits:

"It became a kind of impetus for me to do more serious work. I hadn't studied photography anywhere. Only at an art school, but that doesn't count. The Kharkiv School became a source of inspiration for me."

The final realization of himself as a documentary photographer came with the beginning of the full-scale invasion. During the war, the fluctuations between different styles disappeared. “I realized that I wanted to work with documentary photography.”

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Black and white Kharkiv

He approached filming as a way to be inside the event, not just next to it. Film gave him control, focus and silence - without unnecessary buttons and distractions.” "I wouldn't say that there is a gap between film and digital. I can appreciate digital photography, but film for me is about simplicity and focus. It's more practical for me. There are no extra buttons. There are literally two or three settings, and that's it. It allows me to focus on the event, to be in it, to be in the flow.

Back then, Oleksii immediately plunged into filming. At that time, he met Kharkiv-based photographer Vladyslav Krasnoshchek, who is known for his black-and-white film photos, and the acquaintance quickly grew into a creative friendship. They started going on business trips to the de-occupied territories together.

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"We started filming together. But the choice of black and white film had nothing to do with him or the Kharkiv School. It was just a coincidence."

The choice of black and white is not about nostalgia, but about the full cycle. Oleksii develops the film himself, prints the photos himself, and keeps the process in his hands. This is important to him - not only as an author, but as a person who wants to feel the weight of the image at all stages.

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"With color film, I can't print the photo myself. I need the materiality of it, from the frame to the paper."

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Getting used to the ruins and looking for something else

Three years of war change not only the country, but also the way we look at it. For Oleksiy Chistotin, the changes came gradually - not in the form of a “new aesthetic” but as an internal reconfiguration of vision. What once seemed obligatory to shoot, was now perceived as banality.

"When I first came to the de-occupied territories, I was shooting very straightforwardly. I saw broken equipment and pressed the button. I thought, how could I not take a picture? And now I look at those pictures and they bore me. They say nothing but facts."

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Time and experience have changed the approach. Now the focus is not on the object, but on the sensations - how the world is changing, how the landscape is changing, how light falls on the rubble, how trees broken by explosions grow into the ground. And even the visual language of the film began to change: it is no longer just a “black and white” image, but a delicate balancing act between shades, depths, and the structure of space.

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"I used to not pay attention to the light at all. The main thing was to shoot something. And now it's important for me to have the sky. For the shot to breathe. This is probably a bit of aestheticization. Perhaps, unfortunately. But you get used to these landscapes. And then you start looking for something new in the familiar."

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Return to humanity: portraits of loved ones

Along with the ruins, deformed landscapes and silence after the fighting, another focus appears - people. If earlier Oleksii mostly photographed landscapes and ruins, over time he became more and more interested in the people around him - their views, changes, closeness.

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"I've hardly ever worked with people before. And now it has become very interesting to me. Especially filming my friends who went to the front. How they have changed. How they live. What kind of relationships they have. I want to capture this reality."

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Working in silence: where photographs go

Oleksiy Chistotin is not one of those photographers who immediately put everything into the public space. His approach is detached from the immediate reaction, intuitively restrained. He works with the material as something that needs time, maturation, and settling. That's why most of his works are “for later”.

"I mostly shoot for myself. I need the photo to lie down for a while. So that later I can look at it from a distance and understand what it is really about. The picture has to stand up. I rarely know what to do with it right away."

Now, for example, Oleksii is sorting through the archive of recent years and plans to make several art books.

"I want to collect the key themes I've been working with lately in art books. It's more like a personal summary. I just want to put everything together in a coherent way, to give myself some form."

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Some of Oleksiy Chistotin's works could be seen at exhibitions and sometimes in collections. For example, some of his photographs are kept in Japan, and about 300 pictures are now in the archive of the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography.

"Unfortunately, the museum is now evacuated. It is impossible to function in Kharkiv. That's why this collection is still closed, it's not public."

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“Roadside views of the war”

Nowadays, Oleksii Chystotin's work has clearly defined themes - these are not individual shots or spontaneous series, but full-fledged projects. One of them is Roadside Scenes. He worked on it during a mentoring course at UAPP with Ivan Chernichkin, and it was this project that became the basis for the first full-fledged art book with a hundred black and white photographs.

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“This is a series about nature during the war. There are almost no people there, just some small figures on the horizon. I'm interested in how the landscape changes, how the craters grow, how the damaged equipment rusts and decomposes. This is a slow, invisible digestion of the war by the soil.”

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Artbook

“Roadside Views is not just a sorted series, but a handmade object. Oleksiy created this art book himself from start to finish: from selecting the photos and printing to gluing, cutting the pages and making the cover. For printing, he uses the letterpress technique - not only because of its artistic specificity, but also for economic reasons.

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"This is the cheapest printing option now, because modern photo paper is very expensive. I mostly print on Soviet photo paper. If you look for it, you can find it very cheap. But it's impossible to print on it in conventional chemistry - the contrast disappears, a strange shade appears. It doesn't look very good."

Instead, letterpress printing is a completely different chemistry that produces a completely different result: rich, expressive, and preserving the depth of the image.

"When you print with letterpress, the photos have the right contrast, a nice shade. This is a more complicated technique. In the classical process, the image is developed in two minutes, but here it takes up to forty minutes. But it's almost free. It's beautiful."

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Technique that grows into the ground: “Earth” series

The second important project of Oleksiy Chistotin is a series called “Earth”. He began shooting it in the winter of 2023, and the impetus was not only his interest in the topic but also the appearance of a new camera, the legendary Soviet panoramic camera Horizon, which was temporarily lent to Oleksiy by Serhiy Lebedynskyi.

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"This is exactly the same camera that many of the Kharkiv School used to shoot with. It has something special - it gives a very wide angle and creates a different rhythm of observation. I started shooting and immediately felt that this series would be a separate story."

The Earth project is an observation of the transformation of military equipment after the fighting. The setting is the de-occupied territories of the Kharkiv region, mostly fields, villages, and landings in the Izium district. These are not big cities, but the spaces where the war left its largest and at the same time silent traces.

"This is not about Izyum or Kupiansk as cities. I filmed in the villages and fields, where the equipment was left on its own. It was not always necessary to coordinate anything with anyone. We just came, searched, and filmed."

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Oleksii captures how a military vehicle loses its function and form: first it is broken, then dismantled by the military, then by local residents, and finally it is just a deformed piece of metal that gradually disappears under the influence of time, rust, and soil.

"This is also about war. But not because of the explosion, not because of the people, but because of decomposition. Through the way iron becomes part of the landscape."

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A pause before the next step

Today, Oleksiy Chistotin is at a crossroads. For the past six months, he has been purposefully completing all his active projects. The reason is his desire to mobilize to the press service in one of the Armed Forces units. And although the decision is not yet final, it determines his temporary pause in his new work.

"I am not starting anything new now. I don't want to leave something unfinished. I'll wait for the mobilization to happen, and then I'll decide what and how to shoot next. But I really want to keep taking pictures. Just in different conditions."

For now, he wants to return to his archive: to print what he has postponed, to complete the art books he has just started. In particular, he wants to create a book form for the Earth series. The work on it is still ahead.

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"I realize that it's a lot of work, but I want to make an art book out of The Earth. Because this story deserves to be collected into an object that you can touch with your hands."

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Something that has not yet been seen

In his photography, Oleksiy Chistotin is looking not only for a frame, but also for a landscape, a space that has no voice yet. He is especially attracted to the south of Ukraine.

"I really want to shoot in the South. I have been there only a few times. But that's why it's very interesting to me-because almost no one goes there. I see very few photos from these regions in the media. Most of them are from the phones of locals or the military. It's a rare thing for photographers to come there."

One of his dreams is to continue shooting in the area of the Kakhovka Reservoir, where he has already worked after the dam was blown up by the Russians in the summer of 2023. Then he managed to capture the aftermath of the tragedy, although not without incident, with conversations with the police and lengthy explanations.

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"I would really like to go back there. But access is almost impossible. Last time, we ended up talking to the SBU and spent half a day in the station. Everything turned out fine, but it shows how difficult it is to document what is really important today."

Oleksiy Chistotin does not want the viewer to unravel the specific meaning of his photographs or guess who he has photographed. On the contrary, it is important for him that everyone sees something of their own in the images, something that will resonate with them personally.

"For example, I took pictures of my parents against the backdrop of a destroyed house. But it is not necessary to know that it is my house or my parents. It's important that the viewer is able to take on this experience, to try it on themselves."

The main source of inner strength for the photographer is Kharkiv, the city where he was born, which he constantly shoots and returns to. "Kharkiv inspires me. It has a lot of interesting and strong people. This city does not let you burn out. It keeps you going."

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Oleksiy Chistotin is a Ukrainian photographer born in 2000 in Kharkiv. In 2016-2020, he studied Environmental Design at the Kharkiv Art School. In 2024 he received a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. He became interested in photography in 2019. Since 2021, he has been working in the Vinol photo lab. Since 2022, he has been documenting the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His works are in the collections of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography, the Cherkasy Regional Art Museum, and private collections.

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The material was created by:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Vira Labych
Editorial director: Olga Kovaleva
Literary editor: Yulia Futey
Website manager: Vladyslav Kukhar