I started working on the Radiations of War series in March 2022. Since then, I’ve been staying in areas that were occupied by Russian troops, or territories where hostilities have occurred. I also travel to places that have experienced the terror of Russian missile campaigns. In these places, I take pictures on my medium format camera of war crimes, destroyed civilian infrastructure, the activities of various Ukrainian services, the bodies of fallen warriors and victims among the civilian population.
I didn't have any experience of being a war correspondent before the invasion, so these trips became an intimate encounter face-to-face with pain. It was as if the war had perforated holes in the Earth, through which pain was inflicted in an endless stream – blending planetary and human aspects of existence, and forming an unbreakable bond between the living and those who died terrible, unjust deaths. The term ‘radiation’ alludes to that composite, to the polluted nature of the experience of war, to the fact that in its perception there is always something beyond visual information – some kind of hum, some kind of trembling – that changes our sense of space. It passes through memory, through the body, beyond the body, through generations.
My artistic approach sits between impartial observation – of bearing witness and documenting – and of capturing some more symbolic gestures that foreground the existential dimensions of technical warfare, violence and genocide. These images speak to the consequences of trauma for human existence, as well as to our wider planet.
