Recommendations from the Kyiv Independent: Photo books that help to understand Ukraine (Patreon)

Hi there,

This is Bogdana, I’m the communications manager at the Kyiv Independent. My job is about making sure that the work of our journalists reaches wider audiences. You might have also seen my work in a different role, as a photographer for some of our e-store collections like the Trident and Vyshyvanka collections. 

I probably would never have joined the Kyiv Independent if it weren’t for Russia's war against Ukraine. My life has changed in many ways since 2014 and the occupation of my hometown in the Luhansk region. I immigrated to the United States, where I spent almost a decade, building a life in New York in fashion photography.

Then Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 turned my life upside down once again. In the first days of the invasion, I joined a group of volunteers scattered across the globe to coordinate evacuation efforts. The mission proved successful, and you may have heard of the organization that grew out of it: Helping to Leave. Members of the Kyiv Independent generously supported its work through the KI’s How to Help Ukraine newsletter.

Then I made the decision to move back to Ukraine. Being so far away felt harder than being here and accepting the risks that came with it. It was important for me to contribute to an effort that helps Ukraine. More than that, I wanted to be part of something that helps people see Ukraine as it truly is. Photography could have served that purpose to some extent, but it would not have given me a community of colleagues like the one I found at the Kyiv Independent. They are every bit as remarkable as they appear from the outside.

I thought I’d share a few photo books that I think are worth your time and attention. All of them are quite obscure, and none deal with the war or history. They move me deeply, and I hope they will move you too.

The first is Passport, 2017 by Alexander Checkmenev. I saw this book at a small exhibition in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that my friend curated. Thе cover of this book is hard to miss: bright blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. I opened it, and this was a journey into the world I knew so well that it brought tears to my eyes.

Checkmenev is from Luhansk, and he took these photos for passports, literally. Ukraine gained independence in 1991, but by 1994, many people still had Soviet passports. Ukraine rushed to change that and hired photographers to photograph people who couldn’t go take a new passport photo themselves. Old, often bedridden, crippled.

What makes this book so remarkable is that Chekmenev did not just take passport-style close-ups. Instead, he photographed people in wider shots — perhaps because that was the only lens he had at the time. The result is that you see not only the people themselves, but also how they live and the worlds that surround them.

The book is also a painful sight. I saw this poverty many times growing up. Though the photos were taken the year I was born, and I can have no recollection of that time specifically, the situation did not get much better by the time I gained consciousness and understanding of the world around me.

I am so glad Alexander kept these negatives because he truly captured the time in a very unique way. It's not the sort of work one can simply imagine and execute as a photographic project. This was only possible because he was doing his job, which is so different from exploitative depictions of poverty we sometimes see in documentary photography.

The next one is Lilies, 1999 by Alexander Chekmenev — I don’t own this book yet, sadly, but I’ve seen pictures from it and read Chekmenev’s memories about the making of it enough times to fall in love with it deeply. 

Lilies is a series of portraits of patients of a mental institution in the town of Ovruch in the Zhytomyr region. Once again, what could easily have become an exploitative image, instead is a deeply human portrait of a certain group of a generation of Ukrainians.

Chekmenev writes, "I sat each patient by the window, handed them a bouquet of white artificial lilies, and asked them to smile. Then, a big problem arose — not everyone understood what 'smile' meant."

It is difficult to picture what the lives of these patients were like. Knowing how limited resources were allocated to health services, how decrepit any hospitals were, let alone the mental health institutions that hosted people so marginalized. When I look at these images, I also remember how the Soviet Union often used these places for torture of political prisoners, a tradition Russia still uses widely. This is my speculation that some of these people could’ve been someone like that, too. 

The beauty of the photographic language is that it is an image, and it can never be strictly objective or factual. It always leaves space for reflection. And Chekmenev gives us plenty of space by posing the patients with the artificial flowers against a background of the hospital staff and other patients. He does so in a gentle way, bringing the viewer there, with him, making us feel some sort of connection between those we get to witness.

We Stay, 2023 – Lesha Berezovskiy

Lesha and his wife Agata are my boyfriend’s friends, and now, by extension, mine. They live in central Kyiv, where I lived for a time. So it’s especially dear to my heart to leaf through this book, having gotten to know them a bit. In this book, Lesha documents the first year of the full-scale invasion in an intimate way. There's a portrait of Agata in their bed, sunlight on a staircase, his friend cycling over a bridge Russia bombed in the first days of the full-scale war.

Its subtle language is quiet. I almost want to whisper while talking about this book. In it, you can see life that goes on amid something very painful, but it also acknowledges a certain limbo state many Ukrainians find themselves in currently.

Epitome, 2024 — Vic Bakin

I don’t know Vic — somehow, we never crossed paths despite our many mutual friends and acquaintances. Yet his photography, abstract as it may seem, is a document of a particular time in Ukrainian history. It’s quiet and romantic, with plenty of room for imagination. Portraits of young men and landscapes affected by the war, intertwined with images of sunflowers or a bird's nest — both staples of Ukrainian symbolism and folklore — carry an unease about them. 

What I cherish about this book the most is the tenderness with which Vic portrays the men in these photographs. Especially when masculinity is tied to the raw force and heightened expectations of heroism for men, due to the sheer need for survival, it is a beautiful reminder of the down-to-earth human nature in all of us, no matter the gender.

I hope you will be able to leaf through these books yourself, and I hope they round up the image of Ukraine for you.