Innholdsfortegnelse for #2 2022 i Artdoc Photography Magazine

How do you feel when the ground is knocked out from under you? When your home is gone? When you don’t have a home any longer, only ruins instead? When you have nowhere to go back to, and the temporary escape becomes an endless journey. How do you feel? Confusion? Hopelessness? Panic? Fear? War is a scary word that I only knew from films, books, my grandmother’s stories or the news, but I’ve never thought I would find myself a participant in this horrific tragedy. The sudden outbreak of war had an enormous impact on my family and me, especially the children. Explosions in neighbouring streets, howling sirens, military fighter planes flying low over our house, the need to hide in the bathroom during the air raid, sitting in the…

I am from Kharkiv. When the war came to my country, I felt panic. I was weak and did not know what to do. For the first week, my elderly parents and I had to hide in a metro station that became a shelter and then in the basement of a residential building. My mom ran out of her anti-diabetes drugs one day, and I had to find them for her. The nearest pharmacies were closed, and I had to search for other ones nearby. Finally, I managed to find an open pharmacy and joined the long line of people outside. All of a sudden, a missile hit the ground. Everybody was scared to death, but luckily no people were injured. That day I decided we had to evacuate. We…

In 1981, as an eleven-year-old, Yelena Yemchuk left Ukraine with her family. Even though it was hard to get a visa and leave the country, they managed to emigrate to the USA, travelling with only a suitcase. Young Yelena left behind memories of a happy and carefree childhood. “I was not aware of the political situation at that time. But I knew I should never tell other people what my parents said at home. When we left, I thought we would never return to Ukraine again. It was a very dramatic exit. I had to leave to my grandma and cousins, to whom I was very close.” Tough time In 1991, when Ukraine became independent, Yemchuk went back for the first time. “In my childhood, we were taught at school…

In November 2013, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Kyiv in the Ukraine to protest against the decision of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych to pull out of signing an association agreement with the European Union. Demonstrations, focused on the Maidan (also known in English as Independence Square) in the capital, spread throughout the country, and were violently suppressed. President Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014 as a consequence of the demonstrations, and a pro-EU government took power after new elections. This exacerbated tensions between the east and west of the country. In March 2014, Kremlin-backed forces occupied the Crimean peninsula. Russian is widely spoken in parts of the east of the country and in the Crimean Peninsula; with roughly 30% of Ukrainians using it as…

The project Culture of Confrontation is about two cultures in Ukraine having different world views. During the Maidan revolution, one culture was reaching for the Soviet Union, filled with nostalgia, and another culture craved an independent European country. Maxim Dondyuk says: “Nowadays, the situation is totally different. This is not a fight between two cultures that live in one territory; now, it is a fight with an external enemy. Before this war, it was an inner fight, which was fuelled by Russia with weapons and nostalgic ideas. This confrontation led to the war in Donbas in 2014 and the annexation of Crimea. Now Russia understood they lost this fight, and that’s why they want to destroy the country or return it with force under their influence. We now face the…

The people in the photographs often have a sad look, showing signs of neglect and loneliness. They dress in another age fashion and live in houses with peculiar decorations full of clashing colours. Nevertheless, Viktoria Sorochinski photographed them with dignity and respect, emphasizing their beauty rather than the poor living conditions. She began this project to commemorate her grandfather, who lived in one of these villages, and to remind herself of her ancestral roots. “Ukraine always remains as a place of home in my heart. For many years, I have been feeling rootles big part of my life detached from any country; the sense of belonging to a country was an issue for me. My connection to Ukraine is largely related to my bond and memories of my grandfather, who…

The Embroidered images photographs are used as canvases for stitch art, allowing the needle and thread to convey emotions, evoke atmosphere, or simply create masks over the original subjects. The technique creates a multi-layered image that tells more than one story at once. Sewing is another way to build up a surface and build upon my photographs’ content. I love the meditative process of sewing - it is in such contrast to the technologically more immediate art of photography. I am also interested in how the thread blended in and reacted to the photographs. The combination of sewing and photography brings together two very different processes. The use of embroidery is a reaction to the photographs and is a process that aids in the transformation of the identity of the…

This series shows a First World War German soldiers’ monument in Kaupienica, Belarus. I took the first shot in 2018, I think. The picture was published in the local newspaper, and after a while, a cloth cover and a sign saying “restoration” appeared on it. I kept coming back to this place and watched the bushes around the monument grow, be cut, and then grow back again. Over time the sign fell off, the cover deteriorated and finally fell down. The soldier was left uncovered again. Later, the authorities covered it with a more solid material, tarpaulin, and fastened it with wires and screws. After a couple of months, this new cover was stolen. I took the last shot a week after the start of the war in Ukraine. In…

The Russian-Ukrainian war is an ongoing topic in the life and work of Serhii Korovayny, coming from the Donbas region but recently travelling between Kyiv and Lviv. At the beginning of the recent invasion, he emotionally took charged pictures in the outskirts of Kyiv, starting on the 24th of February 2022. For example, the photo of a young woman looking from the balcony over an empty mass of buildings with an expression of total insecurity. “I made this photo for an assignment for the magazine Politico. It was the second day of the invasion. Politico was looking for human stories about people who are staying in Kyiv. There was a threat that Kyiv would become sieged. She was a progressive Ukrainian girl who posted on TikTok, living with her boyfriend.…

I open the big wooden box of old family photographs and carefully pick ones taken more than twenty years ago in the town of Korostyshiv, one hundred kilometers west from Kyiv, Ukraine. For me it is a place of very intimate family and memory attachment. My mother was born there. It has always been a place where our family members would gather, sit around the table and tell stories from our family history. Korostyshiv is where my roots are, where I spent a lot of time thinking about memory and connection to the place, and the importance of handing down family reminiscences and significant events from generation to generation. Since the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine, there are over one million internally displaced persons. One day, I read…