“Thermal Objects” is one of the projects selected for the third annual microgrant program supporting Ukrainian documentary artists, implemented by UAPP. The program aims to support authors who continue to document the experience of a country resisting aggression and to create visual testimony of events shaping the history of contemporary Ukraine. The program is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine.
This series explores Ukrainians’ experience during attacks on critical infrastructure.
When war destroys sources of light and heat, darkness and cold become weapons. Cities are left without electricity and heating. Yet even in that darkness, the human body continues to radiate—warmth, presence, life. In moments like these, energy appears not as a grid of cables or power plants, but as something inherently human. In the dark, the human being becomes the last source of light.
Using a thermal imager and a digital camera, Marysia Mianovska makes heat visible. What in the images looks like anonymous thermal objects is, in fact, people. People who continue to emit light even when all other sources go out.
“In the darkness of that cold day he knew he carried the fire.” — Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Marysia Mianovska — a Ukrainian photographer working at the intersection of documentary and conceptual photography. She graduated from Viktor Marushchenko’s School of Contemporary Photography and completed a photojournalism course with the NOOR agency in Düsseldorf. She was born in Kyiv, and in recent years has been living between Poland and Ukraine, documenting the consequences of the war’s impact. Through her photo projects, Marysia works with the theme of community and explores generational change. Her first project, “Oh Where Are You, Brother?”, tells the story of different generations of Ukrainian youth coming of age against the backdrop of geopolitical change and war. She is currently working on projects that examine the war’s impact on society. Marysia’s Instagram.
