Dmytro Kupriyan works on the borderline between documentary reproduction of reality and conceptual methods of recording surrounding events. With the outbreak of war, Dmytro joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The new environment and conditions influenced his work. The Art of War or Rules of Caring for a Rifle project depicts everyday life on the front line, where routine is a ritual of survival and protection. The photographs are no longer simply taken by a photographer, but by a soldier who is part of this routine. Thanks to the trust and access to the private space of the military, a bridge is formed for the civilian viewer, who can try to understand everyday life on the front line. The triptychs become complete, short stories, where the combination of photographs creates a polyphony and forms a horizon of events surrounding the author.

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Anya Tsaruk is a Ukrainian photographer based in Berlin. Observing the dynamics of the war in Ukraine from afar, Anya cannot remain indifferent and has created a personal project called I Hope Your Family is Safe. At a time when thousands of families have been separated by war, distance provokes a deep level of empathy for the trauma and pain of loved ones, and the rare moments spent together become precious. Anya focuses her attention on the warm emotions of support and love between people. Her focus is on the interaction and coexistence of people in one space during wartime, when the uncertainty and unpredictability of the next day provokes an open expression of feelings. Fragments of everyday life form a story of care and trust between people, between the author and the viewer.

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Many Ukrainian photographers address the theme of urban landscape. The city has become a symbol of rapid socio-political changes in the country during the years of independence. The rapid transformation of the architectural background reflects economic and historical events. Kyiv-based artist and photographer Roma Moskalenko analyses the city during wartime. He observes the connections between monolithic structures, metal constructions and the almost invisible presence of people in these confusing labyrinths of urban buildings. This interaction is chaotic, disorderly and dynamic. The city is changing, and with it the feeling of security within it. The author attempts to capture the traces of change, the trauma in the concrete, and his own sense of anxiety during the war.

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Ruslana Kliuchko addresses the issue of ecocide during war in her project Feedback Loop. She focuses on the forests of northern Ukraine, where she comes from and where large-scale fires broke out in the autumn of 2024. A large area of the reserve is inaccessible due to replacement and proximity to combat operations. Forest fires release huge amounts of carbon dioxide, exacerbating the greenhouse effect. This, in turn, accelerates climate change and increases the likelihood of new fires, creating a dangerous ‘vicious cycle’ between fires and climate change. To visualise invisible connections, Ruslana uses satellite images and a thermal imaging camera. Graphic, vivid elements reinforce the effect of intrusion into the natural environment, and remote observation of the consequences of fires creates a feeling of helplessness.

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George Ivanchenko began his career as a military photographer in 2022, with the start of full-scale war in Ukraine. Visiting dangerous regions and combat zones, he sought formats for covering the war. The Warhole series is a personal reflection on what is happening on the front line and the processes of representing events in the media. The photographs taken through a doorway symbolise the limited view of war, forcing the viewer to focus only on certain details and leaving room for imagination. This is a critical approach, where the author notes that in order to tell the story of war, one must constantly search for new images, creating a kind of ‘pop art’ of war. It is a struggle for the viewer's attention, and the opening is only a small window into a visually limited reality.

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Members of the jury:

Kateryna Radchenko, Director of Odesa Photo Days Festival, Independent curator

Mykhaylo Palinchak, Photographer, founder of online magazine Untitled

Daria Svertilova, Photographer, FUTURE nominees in 2025

Elena Subach, Photographer, FUTURE nominees in 2019

Daria Svertilova

In her latest project, They Used to Be Here, Daria Svertilova explores the urgent yet deeply emotional issue of the abduction of Ukrainian children by the Russian army. This topic demands a careful and balanced approach—one that raises awareness and shares the stories while safeguarding the children who remain in Russia and protecting the legal organizations working to locate and bring them home.

Svertilova conducts extensive research, collaborating with media outlets, NGOs, and orphanages from which children were taken during the occupation. Through this, she constructs a visual story that blends her own photographs of the children and the places they were abducted from, documentary evidence such as surveillance footage, and visual installations.

With this project, Svertilova seeks not only to draw international attention to the issue but also to pose pressing questions: What does the future hold for these children? She speaks about forced integration and the way the children’s identities get reshaped under the pressure of political decisions, violence, and time.

They Used to Be Here is a work in progress, and we believe that participation in FUTURE will help finalize the project and develop the nuanced visual language necessary to address similar subjects.

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Masha Weisberg

In her project, Inheriting the Silence, Masha Weisberg explores identity formation and examines how the trauma of each generation is muted across time and space. Silence becomes a means of protecting one’s children, while untold stories turn into an archive of memory.

Weisberg navigates her own traumatic experience of war, grappling with the question of how to shield her son from this experience—or, conversely, how to speak about it in a way that ensures history does not repeat itself. She materializes intangible fears and reflections, using glass as a central medium to convey the delicate experience of motherhood. Glass, with its strength and transparency, allows layers of experiences to accumulate one on top of another—yet it remains fragile, its connections breakable in an instant.

Weisberg uses silver-gelatin prints on glass alongside pewter fonts on black aluminum. The fonts depict explosions in Ukraine—opaque at first, requiring light to reveal their details. Her choice of materials underscores the intersection of motherhood and war, showing how they shape her identity within a single moment in time and space. The cyclical process of developing each photograph becomes an act of reinterpreting documented events and traumatic experience.

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Vitalii Halanzha

Over the past three years of war in Ukraine, both Ukrainian and foreign photographers have documented countless stories. Most of these capture the immediate realities of a country in wartime. Only now are we beginning to see works grounded in in-depth research that explore the consequences of war, the future during war, and “temporary peace.”

One such project is Underfoot by Vitalii Halanzha, who reflects on how the perception of reality has shifted, how danger has become ingrained in everyday life, and how expectations for the future are reshaped with all the consequences of post-war period. At first glance, his black-and-white photographs show elements of the natural landscape frozen in time: plant stems, tree bark, bodies of water, and soil. But as the viewer looks closer—moving beyond the foliage and foreground details—foreign intrusions emerge. These are fragments of ammunition, mines, and shells, their presence growing daily across Ukraine—all this in addition to countless active, unexploded mines.

The project also speaks to the evolving visual language of Ukrainian photographers working under wartime constraints. Restrictions on photographing strategic sites, limited access to frontline areas, and mobility restrictions and travel ban—for men of conscription age—have “narrowed” the artistic gaze, yet enabling a deeper reflection.

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Olia Koval

Eruption is a project built on metaphor—a transformer that exists both in physical space and in the realm of printed photographs. Olia handcrafts 40,000 soldier beetles to create the Eruption installation in a Kyiv apartment. It’s an allegory for the Russian invasion, mirroring the takeover of peaceful territories and civilian spaces—places that, just three years ago, were considered safe, were home. Step by step, she documents the details of apartments blanketed by a thick layer of “bugs.” The next stage of the project is a self-portrait—a portrait of the victim—where the face and body are also covered in beetles, symbolizing the invasion of both body and mind. These small, “inanimate” creatures embody the highest degree of vulnerability and anxiety.

In her work, Koval often challenges the boundaries between reality and fiction, pushes toward the reading of visual codes and metaphors, and materializes her thoughts and fears in handcrafted objects. Through this process, her stories gain depth and shape, filling the entire space of representation. They urge us to seek answers and confront the hidden corners of our subconscious.

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Viacheslav Poliakov

In his work, Viacheslav Poliakov focuses on the eclectic details of Ukraine’s public environment. Visual eclecticism is a defining characteristic of post-Soviet countries, where architectural styles, traditional ornaments, and commercial symbols of capitalist influence overlap.

In his latest project, Vapno (Lime), he not only catalogs these visual contrasts but also dives into the in-depth research of connections and consequences between the past Soviet influence and the ongoing effort to erase this past from memory—and, more importantly, from public space. He questions whether such erasure is even possible and to what extent everyday propaganda has already shaped us.

The project is at once ironic and deeply critical. It’s a visual analysis of the space we inhabit, an attempt to assess the situation from a distance, and the provocation of the viewer.

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Odesa Photo Days's 2025 nominations were curated by:

Kateryna Radchenko | Director of Odesa Photo Days Festival, Independent curator

Melnichenko Sergiy | Photographer, head of Photography School MYTH

Mykhaylo Palinchak | Photographer, founder of online magazine Untitled