Although Oleksandr Glyadyelov’s photographic practice covers a vast span of topics this text will focus on photographs taken by Glyadelov in eastern Ukraine, where the war has been ongoing since 2014 and his documentation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started on the 24th of February, 2022. Today, the photographs taken in 2014-2020, narrate historical events that seem to have inevitably moved away from us in time and space. Now the geography of hostilities has changed, as they are taking place all over Ukraine, and their intensity morphed from peaks of activity during the eight years of relative peace to the almost round-the-clock bombing. However, the essence has not changed: war always brings suffering, ruin, and pain – capitalized truths, (un)learned history lessons.
Ukraine is now at the epicentre of the war. Not of their own volition, not because of their geopolitical ambitions. The country and the people who live in it are defending their right to self-determination, freedom, the right to their history, which will not be rewritten to fit the grand imperial narrative, and their land. The goal is worthy, but what is the daily price to pay to achieve it?
Oleksandr Glyadelov is a photographer who was wounded in 2014 while shooting near Ilovaisk during one of the bloodiest battles of eastern Ukraine. His immense archive of photographs is difficult, scary, and impossible not to look at. He puts war in another dimension: abstract, immeasurable, and cruel in its indifference to human destinies. The horrors do not disappear; however, through everyday life, the soldiers’ facial expressions, moments of rest, or maximum tension engraved on film, something deeply human appears – vulnerability, courage, dignity, and victory.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues Oleksandr works without a break covering the wartime events in the city of Kyiv, and the wider Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. With his analogue camera he goes to small towns, the names of which are on everyone’s lips due to the unjustified atrocities and looting carried out by Russian troops. Among these are Bucha, Irpyn’, Borodyanka: towns which were recently cleared of the Russian army. All it left behind is debris, suffering and death.
The ongoing series deals with the presentation of highly charged content and documents the state of affairs in Ukraine with the sensibility of an analogue camera that takes no chances. Glyadelov claims that there is no distance between himself and the photographed subject, which makes his task close to impossible as he often observes matters of life and death, the implausible ferocity of the Russian troops towards civilians and the scorched earth they leave behind. Despite the horrors witnessed in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan, where the photographer covered wars and armed conflicts, through his photographic practice he manifests love for humanity and belief in its capacity to fight for a better future.
Oleksandr Glyadelov prefers not to call himself a war photographer, although he has repeatedly photographed in war zones, and I think I understand why – it would be better if such professions no longer existed.
This text was written on the occasion of the publication Oleksandr Glyadelov, War (2014-2022) released by 89books. It’s an ongoing series of separate volumes, which will be concluded with the end of the war.
Images courtesy of Oleksandr Glyadyelov