We are Ukrainian curators Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, our not-for-profit organization ‘Ukrainian Photography’ was established in Kyiv in 2020, with the aim of supporting the development of photography in Ukraine through exhibition projects, research, and publications. In March 2022 we started to work on the development of the online platform ‘Ukrainian. Photographies’. 

With the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lives of all Ukrainians changed. Although, of course, it has affected not only Ukrainians, because these bloody events will also lead to the reconsideration of many socio-cultural developments that failed to stop this monster. Our project ‘Ukrainian. Photographies’ appeared not only as a reaction of Ukrainian citizens to the war but also as the result of rethinking the functions and capabilities of cultural workers in wartime, addressing the question of how to be useful when it seems that only weapons are; how to rearrange your knowledge and skills on wartime rails. With our project ‘Ukrainian. Photographies’, we seek to ensure and increase the visibility of the Ukrainian photographic sector, to find new meanings, connections, and associations in the works of Ukrainian photographers, inviting researchers and curators from other countries to collaborate. Every month, a new exhibition project will appear on the online platform, which will offer a new vector of views on Ukrainian art and possibly a new approach to working with it. Along with the appearance of online exhibitions, the archive of Ukrainian photography will be replenished and deepened – we will develop an archive of works and projects of Ukrainian photographers, which, at the same time, will become the basis for the work of foreign colleagues and the record of all the work that appears today and is quickly dispersed in the information vortex of war.

An important component of ‘Ukrainian. Photographies’ will also be the texts, which can be divided into several categories. Research texts about Ukrainian photographers, their projects or individual works. These texts will complement the exhibition projects and reveal implicit connections and contexts. A series of interviews with Ukrainian photographers will be prepared by the authors of the project. This section, probably, will become the fundamental one in the long run, because these texts will record the changes and transformations that have been and are taking place in the Ukrainian photographic sector because of the war. The third thematic category of the blog will be materials about other Ukrainian wartime initiatives. Ukrainian musicians, artists, museum workers, theatre professionals, and filmmakers are restructuring their practices to help overcome the hardships the Ukrainian society is facing today. These texts will capture one of the important phenomena of this war – resistance – this is formed at all levels of society, using unconventional approaches and mechanisms.

We launch ‘Ukrainian. Photographies’ with our exhibition ‘Refractions. Home’ as an introduction to the following exhibitions and publications that will be published on the platform in the future. The works of 18 Ukrainian photographers featured in the exhibition were created both before and after the war started. Some works directly comprehend the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2014, while others have no direct connection to the war, but are now compelled to be seen as having such. Regardless of the time, place or chosen focus, all photographers, as well as the authors of the exhibition, talk about a common and the most important place – their home.

All visual and textual materials on the platform, in addition to performing their basic functions, have an extremely important goal – to help raise funds to help Ukrainian photographers, many of whom today are left without the usual working conditions, planned projects, and job opportunities. Part of the funds raised will be distributed among photographers, and the other part – among humanitarian initiatives that help save the lives of people and animals in Ukraine every day. Any contribution will be extremely important for strengthening the already existing incredible support of the Ukrainian people.

• Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi