Every day and everywhere we see photographs. But what kind of images surround us? Why are they there? What ideas do they convey?
Today we are announcing a new section — a photo analysis of the week with Ukrainian radio host and writer Olena Huseynova, in which we will interpret what photographs taken by Ukrainian photographers are telling us, or trying to tell us. Let's start with a photo by Oleg Palchik, taken at the Kherson railway station on December 27.
Oleg Palchik's photo is reminiscent of railway safety posters, the ones that urged employees to “be in uniform” and always wear an orange safety vest, or the ones that insisted that it was dangerous to crawl under train cars. Posters that may still adorn the walls of Ukrainian train stations today.
A green freight car and a station worker in an orange vest are cleaning the platform. It is an ordinary scene that rushes by the train window or that you look at when trying to quickly smoke a cigarette during a short stop. A little nostalgic, like something out of a story by Hryhorii Tiutiunyk or a poem by Serhii Zhadan. A station where nothing happens. Life that will go on even when it disappears from view. That's what this photo looks like if you glance at it quickly.
If you come across it while scrolling through Instagram, without zooming in, examining it, or getting closer to it. Then it's easy to miss the roof of the car, easy to explain why the sliding doors are held in place by a single hinge, opening up triangles of the car's interior. And it's easy to decide that the person in the orange vest is just sweeping trash off the platform. However, it is this trash in the foreground that makes you stop and enlarge the photo. It makes you turn back and look at this photo again. From the broken roof of the carriage, the debris inside, the torn and twisted locks, the broken doors, to the dirt in the foreground, which turns out to be shattered glass of the same gray color that is referred to as the main color of war.
This photo was taken on the morning of December 27, 2023, at the Kherson train station, the day after Russian troops attacked the station. It is already known that the attack took place a few minutes before the departure of an evacuation train and lasted two hours, that at that time there were almost 150 civilians at the station, A police lieutenant and his colleagues were killed and wounded by shrapnel. When the situation stabilized, people were taken by bus to Mykolaiv, where reserve train cars were waiting for them to continue their journey.
This photo shows it all: fear, anxiety, loss, waiting, evacuation protocol. And it also shows a demand, a demand to make an effort. A demand to remain vigilant. A demand to remember the angle at which the battered green door of a freight car at the Kherson train station stands on December 27, 2023. To notice that it is at this angle that a person in an orange vest is leaning to clear the platform of the aftermath of the Russian attack.
And to feel this angle within yourself.
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Olena Huseynova is a Ukrainian writer, radio host, and radio producer. She has been working at Radio Culture (Suspilne) since 2016. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the radio theater and literary programs department. Since February 26, 2022, Olena has been working as a live host on a 24-hour news radio marathon on Ukrainian Radio (Suspilne). She is the author of two poetry books, “Open Rider” (2012) and “Superheroes” (2016). She writes essays and short prose.
