Instagram Post Text
Attention! Translation was done using AI, mistakes are possible
Vlada.
Before February 24, our plan in case of war was: leave. Our lifestyle and profession allowed us to move to any country and live quite well there.
On February 24, we loaded the car, waited in line for gas, waited in line at the bank. From Odesa, we could’ve reached Moldova fairly quickly. We headed out, and then just silently turned around and drove home.
We took our first photographs of the war in early March. We came to the train station as volunteers. Kostia took shots of men saying goodbye to their families, women and children leaving. We realized we had something to photograph. It would just be something completely different.
We entered Irpin and Bucha before the journalists — we saw everything. But we were naive. At the beginning of the war, we had a principle: no photos of the dead, we want our photography to give hope. This backfired — Russian propaganda took our photos: “See, [there] was a photographer, and notice he has no dead bodies.”
After that, we understood that a photograph that gives hope and a truthful one aren’t always the same. Sometimes, if you want a photograph to be truthful, it has to be brutal.
We don’t like reflecting on how hard it is for us emotionally. This is our choice. When it gets hard, we can leave everything and go home for a day or two.
Odesa lives a normal life — I could just go and have a tartare at a café. I can afford to switch off. But there are people who can’t, because their homes no longer exist.
We arrive: the private sector of Chernihiv, a seventy-year-old man sitting beside a destroyed house. He says: “The house is dust, nonsense. But who’ll give me back my wife?” We met him in April, and in July they would have celebrated 50 years of marriage. I don’t know how to help a person who lived with his wife for 50 years and she’s no longer there. Kostia and I have been together for almost ten years, but if something happens to him, I don’t know how to live.
Sometimes Kostia worries that I’m going with him. The soldiers say: “You’re small and fragile,” and leave me in a safe area. And in that safe area, I’m far more restless.
We regularly come under fire. On our last trip, they were shelling the exact positions where we were. Kostia and I ended up in different trenches. Thankfully, we had a radio, and the soldiers let us use it.
At least we could call out: are you alive or not? I’m lying there, more worried about him than about myself, and he — about me.
The worst thing under fire is if you panic. It harms you and everyone around you. So when something insane happens, we’re not scared in the moment. Later, when I replay in my head what could have gone wrong, I might lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Kostia, in those moments, watches YouTube videos for hours where some guy explains how to properly pack a backpack.
In June, at the height of the war, my parents gave me a chihuahua puppy. They figured I’d stay home with the “baby” in my arms, but it didn’t work. We started taking him along. He walked through trenches, spent nights at positions. His name is Ukrop.
At the beginning of the war, people would rush at anyone with a camera, wanting to tell their stories. Everyone was certain: we’ll show the world, Russian subscribers, what’s happening, and it will all stop.
Now people are tired. They feel like they’re in a zoo. You live in a basement, your apartment’s destroyed, there’s no water, constant shelling. And periodically someone with a camera shows up and asks you for the hundredth time to describe what’s happening.
Of course you’ll tell them to get lost. There have already been hundreds like them who asked you to talk, and it doesn’t help.
We never had ambitions to be documentarians. We truly loved what we did. But [now] I can say for certain: we’ll never go back to love stories.
We’ve shot several military weddings, but that’s something completely different. Neither he nor she knows whether they’ll get that “happily ever after.”
Even before the war, we used to joke that Kostia has a superpower: at a wedding, he can always tell whether the couple truly loves each other. Now, at every military wedding we’ve shot, there hasn’t been a single one where they weren’t marrying for love. You can cut that love with a knife in the air.
To honestly and sincerely photograph love, you need certain settings inside you. It’s not that we’ve lost those settings… But we won’t be able to switch back anytime soon.
Kostia.
When you’ve read the news and arrived [on location] to shoot, the news is already outdated. So in choosing where to go, I’m guided by intuition and — don’t laugh — pro-Kremlin social media channels. They often post news before it happens.
With the military, situations vary. They can treat photographers in completely different ways. Someone lost their comrade yesterday and connects it to the fact that the comrade gave an interview the day before he was killed. You won’t change their mind. That’s normal.
My greatest fear is sliding into cynicism. I see a lot of professionals in their field. Often, listening to their conversations, you catch a note of cynicism. I’m afraid of that, so I try not to forget about the people I work with.
If your photograph isn’t good enough, get closer (the phrase belongs to photographer Robert Capa — A. S. Pushkin). That’s my small life credo. If you shot something poorly, get closer and reshoot, even if it’s unsafe. Only in hindsight will you understand whether it was worth it. If I weighed the safety of every shot, I’d be sitting at home.
[In war, ] my photography has gotten better. You’re constantly shooting under stressful conditions. I’m not talking about mines and shelling. I mean wrong light, greenery — that’s a photographer’s pain, something we try to avoid in peaceful life. But here [you simply can’t]: you have to constantly think about how the sun falls through foliage, how it reflects off a tank.
Were there objects that stayed in my memory? The first was in Kyiv. A rocket hit a private house, and belongings were scattered across the street. I saw a photo album. There was wind, pages turning and shimmering among the ashes.
After the second object, I have a small trigger for tricycles. A rocket hit near the SBU building in Kramatorsk. Balconies crumbled. One balcony [hangs] empty, and on it stands a child’s tricycle.
Would I go to photograph another war, once Ukraine wins and rebuilds? Honestly, I don’t know. I still have work to do on my skills. Right now we’re photographing the war because the war is in our country — it’s a desire to contribute a little to victory. But I think the answer is probably yes.
Being a war photojournalist was my childhood dream, but I was always sure the profession was dead. In our program, it was given as an example on par with ancient painting. Who needs war photojournalists now, when there’s GoPro? Now I understand I was wrong.
