For two months, Oleksiy Chystotin worked with his mentor Ivan Chernichkin on his own archive for 2022-2024. As a result of the mentorship, Oleksiy received micro-grant support to continue his work.

The result of the photographer's work is the Roadside Views project, through which he explores the state of devastation and exhaustion that prevails in the frontline areas. The project is realized in the form of a handmade art book with prints using the letterpress technique.

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In September 2022, the Ukrainian army liberated large areas east of Kharkiv. At the end of the offensive, the humanitarian situation remained dire, with destroyed infrastructure and housing, mined fields, and burned vehicles along the roads. Constant shelling deepened the humanitarian crisis and provoked an outflow of people from the frontline areas.

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Two years since the de-occupation. Traces of human existence are dissolving into the surrounding landscape: ruins are growing into the ground, and devastated villages are disappearing among the dense bush. Green trucks and dirty pickup trucks stretch along the soggy dirt roads. The war continues.

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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, the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography, the Cherkasy Regional Art Museum, and private collections. Photographer's social networks: Instagram, Facebook.