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Fotokunst Ukrainast

SISSEJUHATUSEKS

Fotograafia olemus on püüda valgust. See teeb fotograafiast kunsti vormi, mis on eriti oluline praegustel pimedatel aegadel. Meie mission Fotografiskas on toetada kunstnike ja tagada, et nende hääl oleks kuulda ning samuti näidata maailma eripalgelist värvipaletti. Ajal mil sõda möllab Ukraina territooriumil, vaid mõnesaja kilomeetri kaugusel Eestist, on aeg pöörata oma pilgud Ukraina fotograafide suunas. Näitame 7 kunstniku töid, kes on erinevas eas, kogemuste ning tasutaga mehed ja naised, samal ajal kui nende elud on täis vägivalda. Läbi pildi ning sõna räägivad nad meile enda suhtest selle sõjaga, enda igapäevaelust, hirmudest, leinast aga ka tuleviku lootustest. Täname südamest fotograafe, kes nendes väga keerulistes tingimustes leidsid aja, et see projekt koos meiega teoks teha. Projekt valmis koostöös Eric Schlosser’ga, Tbilisi Kuntimessi kunstilise juhiga. Eric on üle 15 aasta kureerinud ning organiseerinud hulgaliselt rahvusvahelisi foto- ning kunstiprojekte.

Meil on rõõm tutvustada järgmiste fotograafide töid - Dimitri Bogachuk, Arthur Bondar, Vita Buivid, Lisa Bukreyeva, Diana Fedoriaka, Alena Grom ja  Xenia Petrovska. Kannustame teid külastama ka kunstnike isiklike lehekülgi, et tutvuda teiste töödega. Piltide müügitulu läheb fotograafide toetuseks

MISSIOON

Kunstimüügi eesmärk on heategevuslik ning müügitulu läheb fotokunstnike toetamiseks

INFOKS

Näitusetööd on signeeritud dateeritud ja kõiki fotosid müüme 30nese tiraažiga suuruses 40x52cm. Fotoprint tuleb koos paspartuuga lõppviimistlusega ning võimalus on tellida töö koos musta või valge raamiga. 

KUNSTNIKUD

DIMITRI BOGACHUK

My work is based on feelings that are inside of me. When I spend time in Dunkirk, I don’t want to photograph the places that show historic parts of the city. I just want to show a beach out of time, that saw everything before this very moment. When I will visit Bucha, next to my hometown, I don’t want to show destroyed building, I just want to show something inside me, silence, nostalgia. We are all tired now.


I could compare my practice with the art of haiku

At the battlefield
Long kept the earth
Rusty cartridge case

An old silent pond
A frog jumps into the pond—
Splash! Silence again.

I do not plan projects, I work with beautiful light and interesting landscapes. My approach is very easy. I take my camera with me everywhere

Today, my wife, 2 young kids and I are refugees. When the war started my dear friend let us live in her home in Khmelnytskyi. Our city was being bombed. Few days before the war, I returned from Sweden, after visiting Fotografiska Museum. I just had Ian exhibition in Berlin, I’m trying to work and participate in activities that raise money for Ukraine. But it’s not enough. And the bombs are still falling on Ukraine, every minute of every hour. All Ukrainians are in now in limbo. I made those pictures in march.

XENIA PETROVSKA

In my photographs I like to create an atmosphere with something that is not visible to the human eye. Some efforts and manipulations can reveal a magical or metaphorical sense. With the dreamlike and mysterious scenes of my native village I work with the concept of home and belonging. My street photographies captures passers-by in a solitary state, a moment of human presence which is not violated by anyone else.

When the war started, I was in Germany. I planned to go home in March but now I have no idea when I will be able to come back. My whole family and friends are in Ukraine and I'm extremely worried about all of them. I feel a terrible pain looking at what is happening in my country. The awareness of this brutal injustice causes a great disappointment and a complete inability to understand our future. From time to time these pain and anger turn into a bottomless sorrow for my country. Every morning starts in the same way: I take my phone and text my family and friends those simple words :"How are you?". When I see that they are online, it makes me truly happy. On Sundays, I go to demonstrations here, in Germany, where I meet a lot of kind people who are ready to help Ukrainians in those dark times. I haven't made any new pictures, I'm stuck in uncertainty.

VITA BUIVID

On February 24, 2024, I woke up early in the morning, made coffee and turned on the song « Chornobrivtsi" (marigolds). February 24 is my mother's birthday. She passed away 4 years ago. This was her favorite song. And her favorite flowers. They are now blossoming on my balcony in Amsterdam. I listened to the song, drank coffee, and thought about my mother - Lydia Pavlovna Titarenko, born in Ukraine. We had planned with our family to have a small dinner in her honor and get together online. It’s when I opened Facebook to speak with my older sister that I learned the war had begun. For a long time I tried to reach her in Dnepropetrovsk. I then tried to persuade her and her husband to move to Holland. They refused. They wanted to stay at home

It's hard for me to talk about my works now. Everything seems to be worthless. Especially after Bucha. My work never was documentary. Just my thoughts and feelings about reality. I had a premonition of war for a very long time. Maybe because the war topic has always been present in my life: my parents survived the Second World War. My father and grandfather fought at the front, and my mother and grandmother survived the German occupation. They also survived the Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine. Maybe it is this generational trauma that manifests itself in my work. I made the first series of works with a military theme in 1996, « Girl and soldier ». In 2007, I worked on the « Morning in a Pine Forest » series, which has a nuclear war theme. In 2008 I made the series presented here, "How I Spent My Summer". It is based on photographs that I took as a child in a pioneer camp in the village of Ivano-Mikhailovka near Dnepropetrovsk. My mother and sister came to visit me and brought the camera. It was a trophy Zeiss brought back from the war by my grandfather. “Eigentum der Luftwaffe” was written in the case. My grandparents never spoke to me about the war. My pictures were never printed. My father found them not good enough. But, my sister kept the negatives and presented them to me for my 45th birthday. I scanned those frames, printed them in very large size on satin and began to paint with oil on them. It turned out too pretty. So I went for a walk with my dog. Strangely, I did not meet a single person during the walk. How was this possible in Moscow, in a densely populated area? That day I got a strong feeling that there would be a war. I did more prints on satin - found various military operations pictures online and sewed them into my beautiful childhood memories. I wish I didn't! The war began in Ossetia, and I thought my work had something to do with that war. But now, it turned out that that was not the case. But who could have imagined that Russia would start a war with Ukraine? How is this possible?

In 2014, Donbass began. That day I made the installation "Comfort food". I just nailed cherry dumplings to the wall in my apartment. Cherry juice, very similar to blood, started dripping. In another series, "For external use », I used real blood and tears, milk, snot and semen and urine and bile. All human liquids…

Now I can't do anything. My psyche is torn from my own helplessness and uselessness. There is no way I can help my sister or my friends in Ukraine. I cannot help my friends in Russia, who are clearly in danger of repressions. I have been living in Holland for three years now, a safe space. Of course, all of us here are trying to do at least something: help refugees, transfer funds to help Ukraine, participate in protests. But it's so tiny, so limited, and it hurts so much. And it is impossible to compare this pain with the one that Ukrainians are experiencing now. It's genocide. It's fucking War!

LISA BUKREYEVA

When I was a kid, I dreamed of a superpower:  I wanted to take pictures when I blinked. That way, everything I’m seeing in that moment would be in a picture. I never had this superpower, so I bought cameras.

I mostly shoot street and documentary photography. It is important for me to establish a connection between people and the environment in which we are. If in the end, the photo reflects the time in which the author lives, it’s especially valuable to me.

I started the war diary on the very first day the war started.

War Diary ->

DIANA FEDORIAKA

Diana Fedoriaka sündis 1999. aastal. Ta alustas lühifilmide ning muusikavideodega, õpingute käigus MYPH koolis mõistis aga, et tema tõeline kirg on fotograafia. Diana esimene piltide seeria “My naked friends” on statement noorte At the end of summer 2021, I got a job offer in Qatar and temporary move there to work. I was homesick the whole time and was counting the days. In April, I was supposed to be back.

I was making huge plans, a book with my projects, my documentary film, a few exhibitions in Kharkiv, reunions with my friends and colleagues, a project in Chernobyl and that’s only a shortlist.A few hours before the war started I was talking with my fiancé, making plans to go to Kharkiv, Carpathian mountains and Lviv, renovate our house and start to grow our own food in the garden. Throughout that whole night, I remember waking up constantly because of messages that kept coming, so I shut my phone down. When I woke up, I was in shock, the war had started. I didn’t have any tears for a whole week. I just couldn’t reflect. I was just trying to help, I was checking on everyone. The scariest part was to realize that everyone I love is in a constant danger. A few weeks after, I asked something about my dad in our family chat, and realized my mum kept from me that he joined the army, for a reason unknown to me. But I am proud of him and he’s my hero. I know that my family would never leave their home, even if they are in danger no matter how strong I would beg them to.

Before Russia started a war in my country I was working on my new project about the perception of beauty, but now all of my thoughts and attention are with Ukrainian people. I want to speak about the horrors of the Russian invasion through my art and I’m now trying to figure out the way to do it. I know that victory is inevitable, we know what freedom is and we are united and fearless! In the near future, I plan to go home, help to rebuild and make my country even stronger than it was before. Glory to Ukraine!

ARTHUR BONDAR

From the very first moment I took a camera in my hand I felt some kind of magic. For me photography is really a unique and individual language easy to understand for everybody. I try to tell personal stories shooting with black & white / color film, digital and experimenting with different kinds of media. I have been always interested in photography that was on the edge of contemporary art and documentary photography.

Nowadays, the subject becomes more and more important. For the last 7 years I have worked a lot with archives and historical events, collective and private memories.

I moved to Moscow in 2012 because of my wife. I always traveled back and forth to cover different stories and events both in Ukraine and Russia, including Maidan, Crimea and Donbass. Today we have a full scale war between Russia and Ukraine. A week before the war started I covered the situation along the border, and at that time nobody believed in the possibility of a real war. Early morning 24th of February 2022, we were all in shock, and we still are. When my wife called me early that morning I was in a train heading back to Moscow. Our parents still in Ukraine, under the shells. We were feeling helpless and devastated, but we understood that we needed to provide medicine and food for our parents. So we did it and keep doing it with the help of volunteers, friends and kind people. Each day starts and ends with a call to our parents, to see if they are ok. Many of our friends fled from Russia not to be drafted or scared of the uncertain future here. Many international media left the country since the criminal law about fake and discrediting news about the Russian army. I continue working, but the job of photojournalist has become dangerous and nearly impossible.

Fotod