Interrupted Life

I could compare my practice with the art of haiku

At the battlefield
Long kept the earth
Rusty cartridge case

An old silent pond
A frog jumps into the pond—
Splash! Silence again.

I do not plan projects, I work with beautiful light and interesting landscapes. My approach is very easy. I take my camera with me everywhere

Today, my wife, 2 young kids and I are refugees. When the war started my dear friend let us live in her home in Khmelnytskyi. Our city was being bombed. Few days before the war, I returned from Sweden, after visiting Fotografiska Museum. I just had Ian exhibition in Berlin, I’m trying to work and participate in activities that raise money for Ukraine. But it’s not enough. And the bombs are still falling on Ukraine, every minute of every hour. All Ukrainians are in now in limbo. I made those pictures in march.

When the war started, I was in Germany. I planned to go home in March but now I have no idea when I will be able to come back. My whole family and friends are in Ukraine and I'm extremely worried about all of them. I feel a terrible pain looking at what is happening in my country. The awareness of this brutal injustice causes a great disappointment and a complete inability to understand our future. From time to time these pain and anger turn into a bottomless sorrow for my country. Every morning starts in the same way: I take my phone and text my family and friends those simple words :"How are you?". When I see that they are online, it makes me truly happy. On Sundays, I go to demonstrations here, in Germany, where I meet a lot of kind people who are ready to help Ukrainians in those dark times. I haven't made any new pictures, I'm stuck in uncertainty.

It's hard for me to talk about my works now. Everything seems to be worthless. Especially after Bucha. My work never was documentary. Just my thoughts and feelings about reality. I had a premonition of war for a very long time. Maybe because the war topic has always been present in my life: my parents survived the Second World War. My father and grandfather fought at the front, and my mother and grandmother survived the German occupation. They also survived the Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine. Maybe it is this generational trauma that manifests itself in my work. I made the first series of works with a military theme in 1996, « Girl and soldier ». In 2007, I worked on the « Morning in a Pine Forest » series, which has a nuclear war theme. In 2008 I made the series presented here, "How I Spent My Summer". It is based on photographs that I took as a child in a pioneer camp in the village of Ivano-Mikhailovka near Dnepropetrovsk. My mother and sister came to visit me and brought the camera. It was a trophy Zeiss brought back from the war by my grandfather. “Eigentum der Luftwaffe” was written in the case. My grandparents never spoke to me about the war. My pictures were never printed. My father found them not good enough. But, my sister kept the negatives and presented them to me for my 45th birthday. I scanned those frames, printed them in very large size on satin and began to paint with oil on them. It turned out too pretty. So I went for a walk with my dog. Strangely, I did not meet a single person during the walk. How was this possible in Moscow, in a densely populated area? That day I got a strong feeling that there would be a war. I did more prints on satin - found various military operations pictures online and sewed them into my beautiful childhood memories. I wish I didn't! The war began in Ossetia, and I thought my work had something to do with that war. But now, it turned out that that was not the case. But who could have imagined that Russia would start a war with Ukraine? How is this possible?

In 2014, Donbass began. That day I made the installation "Comfort food". I just nailed cherry dumplings to the wall in my apartment. Cherry juice, very similar to blood, started dripping. In another series, "For external use », I used real blood and tears, milk, snot and semen and urine and bile. All human liquids…

Now I can't do anything. My psyche is torn from my own helplessness and uselessness. There is no way I can help my sister or my friends in Ukraine. I cannot help my friends in Russia, who are clearly in danger of repressions. I have been living in Holland for three years now, a safe space. Of course, all of us here are trying to do at least something: help refugees, transfer funds to help Ukraine, participate in protests. But it's so tiny, so limited, and it hurts so much. And it is impossible to compare this pain with the one that Ukrainians are experiencing now. It's genocide. It's fucking War!

I was making huge plans, a book with my projects, my documentary film, a few exhibitions in Kharkiv, reunions with my friends and colleagues, a project in Chernobyl and that’s only a shortlist.A few hours before the war started I was talking with my fiancé, making plans to go to Kharkiv, Carpathian mountains and Lviv, renovate our house and start to grow our own food in the garden. Throughout that whole night, I remember waking up constantly because of messages that kept coming, so I shut my phone down. When I woke up, I was in shock, the war had started. I didn’t have any tears for a whole week. I just couldn’t reflect. I was just trying to help, I was checking on everyone. The scariest part was to realize that everyone I love is in a constant danger. A few weeks after, I asked something about my dad in our family chat, and realized my mum kept from me that he joined the army, for a reason unknown to me. But I am proud of him and he’s my hero. I know that my family would never leave their home, even if they are in danger no matter how strong I would beg them to.

Before Russia started a war in my country I was working on my new project about the perception of beauty, but now all of my thoughts and attention are with Ukrainian people. I want to speak about the horrors of the Russian invasion through my art and I’m now trying to figure out the way to do it. I know that victory is inevitable, we know what freedom is and we are united and fearless! In the near future, I plan to go home, help to rebuild and make my country even stronger than it was before. Glory to Ukraine!

Nowadays, the subject becomes more and more important. For the last 7 years I have worked a lot with archives and historical events, collective and private memories.

I moved to Moscow in 2012 because of my wife. I always traveled back and forth to cover different stories and events both in Ukraine and Russia, including Maidan, Crimea and Donbass. Today we have a full scale war between Russia and Ukraine. A week before the war started I covered the situation along the border, and at that time nobody believed in the possibility of a real war. Early morning 24th of February 2022, we were all in shock, and we still are. When my wife called me early that morning I was in a train heading back to Moscow. Our parents still in Ukraine, under the shells. We were feeling helpless and devastated, but we understood that we needed to provide medicine and food for our parents. So we did it and keep doing it with the help of volunteers, friends and kind people. Each day starts and ends with a call to our parents, to see if they are ok. Many of our friends fled from Russia not to be drafted or scared of the uncertain future here. Many international media left the country since the criminal law about fake and discrediting news about the Russian army. I continue working, but the job of photojournalist has become dangerous and nearly impossible.