Year: 2022
Venue: Czech Republic, Belgium and USA
The full-scale attack on Ukraine, which Russia gratuitously launched on February 24, 2022, differs from similar stories of Russian imperialist aggression in one way: it takes place during the information revolution, so this time we have the opportunity to compare the Kremlin's lies literally in real time.
The war photographs of the members of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers provide us with vivid evidence of the suffering of ordinary people and the courageous struggle for our own, as well as for our freedom. Many of the photographers featured before the war were engaged in a completely different genre of photography, but now they document the fighting on the front lines.
The curated selection of several thousand photographs from 15 Ukrainian photographers and photographers focuses not only on the plastic representation of the development of the conflict, in particular its beginnings, but above all on several key themes: life during war, the situation of refugees, the struggle for freedom, the consequences of war and, ultimately, the hope that is constantly present It is present, even in the most difficult moments.
An important part of the selection is also photographs from the places where the fiercest fighting took place and where the retreating Russian troops committed crimes against the local population — Bucha, Irpin and, above all, Mariupol.
One of the biggest mistakes we constantly make in history is our inability or unwillingness to believe in absolute evil. It is human nature to interpret cruelty, injustice and violence through the prism of convenient corporate principles and inter-neighborhood strife. It is easier for us to perceive evil as a fault of the system, a misunderstanding that, by good will, sooner or later, will surely somehow be solved. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly asked Putin — also verbatim, with a certain, even touching sincerity: “What exactly do you need?” He did not answer. After all, the intentions of evil are tautological, they are locked in themselves and do not take into account anyone or anything else. The purpose of evil is evil. It's stunningly simple, and perhaps that's why it's so hard to understand. If evil rationalizes its action, it is only in order to create a smokescreen into which it then draws those who seek to negotiate with it. In the end, the result of such an arrangement is always the opposite of life. Here you should not look for a mutually beneficial solution. Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Bakhmut. Mom, neighbor, groom, three-year-old boy. Uncle Vasya. Specific people with names. These dead faces that emerge from the smokescreen of words do not seek dialogue. They demand justice.
“The stars in the sky will not stop shining anyway,” says Mrs. Elena with dark circles under her eyes, so in the morning you buy smoked fish at the market. The trains will also run further until the day of judgment, and the conductors will continue to deliver teas and wish the passengers a happy journey, whether they are now heading to the front or fleeing from there. Children will play on the bombed playground with the same enthusiasm as before, only during this time they will wave their hands more often and shout: “Air alarm! Air alarm!”. And the band you've been waiting for all year will play exactly until this air alarm really kicks in, and so you'll wander through the faded city again, watching with one eye to see if the stars start falling on you. This is in order to still have time to guess something. One must believe in at least a small temper, because even on this inconspicuous front, every centimeter of life that can no longer be returned is important. And so you silently look at the sky above the dark sleeping area, and then say aloud: “Never before have the stars been so beautifully visible over Kiev.” And when at three o'clock the light turns on by some miracle, Mrs. Elena with dark circles under her eyes will start her ancient computer and take up accounting, because suddenly there will be no electricity again in the afternoon. And also because in life it is important to keep accounts. And she says that no one should justify war.
Evil spreads pain in circles that gradually strike a larger and larger area, like a tornado circling the blind, dead eye of a hurricane, like devastation after an explosion. There are places on earth where family tombs have adorned the same cemeteries for centuries, only increasing are the number of names on the tombstones, which in this way continue a long, continuous history of life. And there are also places where it is not for the first time that the whirlwind of the apocalypse rolls, where military berets and heavy equipment tear up graves every few decades. Stories without names, houses without builders and names scraped from stone on tombstones are like state secrets that have been carefully guarded. Again and again, unpunished violence causes an endless stream of people, the same exhausting escape from the open mouth of an ancient creation that lasts for ages. The force with which living beings are thrown into the vortex of life strips them to existential nakedness, the kind we first experience at birth, and then again — when the forces of absolute evil tear us away from our land and rush somewhere. Without resources, without a past and often even without the closest people. Endless queues at stations, camps, check-in desks; exhausted children embrace toys that replace them with the closeness of mothers tearing over suitcases and resenting bureaucracy. Frightened, tired looks of adults and inquisitive, impetuous eyes of children.
The purpose of evil is its own spread, reproduction. Already enslaved, slaves for their masters try to enslave the still free. It is not surprising that Putin's army consists primarily of representatives of the minor peoples of the Russian Federation and prisoners. However, free people are forced to resist them.
Several military personnel come to Lviv on vacation. They took it at a time when one of the most prominent book fairs in Ukraine — the Publishers Forum — was held in the city. A few days later, they returned to the front. On the back is a backpack with military equipment, in both hands bags stuffed with newly purchased books.
Today, readers and writers, opera singers and their audience, band frontmen, directors, actors and girls who admired them are fighting on the Ukrainian front. There are no punitive detachments behind them, they fight because they voluntarily made such a decision. Instead of enslavement or escape, they chose the only viable option. If they fail, we will soon be faced with the same choice.
Evil forms power lines around its victim, stigmas, as around the source of unhappiness, as a warning to others: “It is better not to approach!”. The border from the Polish side at the railway station in Przemysl can be easily crossed, just go to another platform and wait for the nearest train of Ukrzaliznytsia. But despite this, “here” is spoken of with a certain sacred fear, as a place where “there” begins. But when you are already sitting in a modern car, wandering around the Internet and looking forward to a cup of coffee, you would not even notice this hill with signs, if children's voices were not constantly heard from everywhere: “Hurray!!!”. The children are proud of themselves - everything finally worked out in them: they were very obedient and moms were sympathetic, allowing them to go to dad for a few days. And if they have already succeeded for a few days, they will now be even more obedient: they will take out the trash, study, clean and brush their teeth from morning to night, so next time... next time moms will surely let them go back to dads forever. And they will no longer live with their grandfather, they will live at home!
Sometime in April 2022, at a time when the last journalists had already been evacuated from Mariupol under tragic circumstances, 20-year-old Lviv resident Tanya was called by a former classmate with whom she had not seen for some time: “You, Tanya, aren't you angry that I'm calling? Look, the guys and I are in Mariupol, we now have a signal, a replenished SIM card, we can call anyone in the world. But everyone tells us that there is absolutely nothing they can do for us now. Just in case something came to your mind...”
We do not know anything about the future fate of this military. All we know is that there is no institution in the entire universe that alone can help you, when the situation becomes truly critical, when the level of violence and injustice is greater than you can physically contain. No trust phone, no organization or state — nothing can effectively help in a particular situation of a particular person. They are just abstractions. The last, and also the only one who has the real power to really move things off the ground, is a weak, alive, absolutely concrete person who will not leave you. Tanya from high school. You, me, all of us who are in debt to Mariupol. We can only oppose absolute evil with absolute solidarity.
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