Within the FotoEvidence Ukraine initiative, the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPP) published Serhii Korovainyi’s photo book “Donbas, a Land of Hell and Love” — a personal story about a home that no longer exists, and about love for a land that cannot be erased from memory.
Serhii is originally from Khartsyzk. In this book, he rethinks what it means to lose one’s native place — and how to continue loving it even when it is occupied and destroyed. The publication spans the years 2000–2025, portraying Donbas as a prolonged, everyday experience: of memory, trauma, humanity, and a region that has changed forever.
The book includes more than one hundred photographs. The author deliberately places the emphasis on the images — without unnecessary formal effects, with a vertical logic to the publication and captions (place/date) moved to the end, so that nothing interrupts the inner rhythm of the story. This is a book about war and war crimes, but at the same time — about people’s lives, in which warmth and tenderness exist alongside darkness. A symbol of this ambivalence is the cover: a photograph from a trip to the positions, where stars shine above the darkness, and below — the cold gaze of a thermal imager.
The selection of photographs was worked on by photo editors Irynka Hromotska and Danylo Pavlov, and the final strengthening of the edit was aided by American photo editor Sarah Leen — trimming the material so that the book became shorter, yet stronger.
On February 3, at the PEN Ukraine space, a presentation of the photo book took place, along with a conversation about the long path of its creation and about why photo documentary practice remains one of the key ways of preserving history and reflecting on the present.
The publication was produced with the support of the Open Society Foundations and the International Renaissance Foundation within the FotoEvidence Ukraine initiative.
