Daria Svertilova’s series Temporary Homes began in 2019 and is an ongoing, long-term documentary project. The work explores the independence of younger generations of Ukrainians in their living environments, something that Svertilova sees as symbolic of broader social and political change in a country moving towards globalisation and away from its Soviet past.
The pictures introduce us to student dormitory buildings and their inhabitants in Ukraine. Built in the Soviet era as social housing, these buildings continue to offer the cheapest places to rent for young people moving away from home to study. The living conditions have changed little in the last 20-25 years but the occupants and the country of Ukraine has changed a great deal. Svertilova was interested in representing the lives of a generation born after the year 2000 and the people in her pictures are mostly young students transitioning from teenage years to adulthood. They are learning subjects including Screenwriting, Philosophy, Reproductive Biology and Psychiatry.
Svertilova made initial contact with them on social media and has since been introduced to others by friends of friends. From the outside the dormitory buildings are large and austere. On the inside, they reveal a diverse network of personal, intimate interiors. The students have established and defined their own homes with within each of their small rooms despite knowing that these living spaces are temporary. Most will be here for 3-4 years.
Svertilova’s pictures in this series are partly a reaction against the proliferation of photo-journalistic images representing Ukrainian youth through the prism of techno culture, raves, poverty and war. Started before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014, this series is highlighting a generation of young people that are the future of Ukraine. Those that have been able to have stayed in their accommodation since the Russian invasion. These are some of the people that will rebuild Ukraine after the war. As Svertilova has commented, they are young, smart and full of hope.
Images courtesy of Daria Svertilova
