Reviewed by Shyama Laxman
On 24th February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine thereby worsening the conflict between the two countries that first started in 2014. Considered to be one of the largest military strikes against a European nation since World War II, and one which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said could lead to World War III (1), this war has turned approximately four million Ukrainians into refugees (2), and over six million have been displaced internally.
Curated by Kateryna Radchenko, The Thin Line draws on works created by 16 Ukrainian artists including Yurko Dyachyshyn, Andriy Lomakin, Volodymyr Petrov, Stas Yurchenko, Mickhail Palinchak, Elena Subach, Serhii Nuzhnenko, Viacheslav Ratynki, Yulia Chervinska, Oleksandr Navrotskyi, Alina Smutko, Sirhiy Hudak, Shilo Group, Pavel Dorogoy, Igor Efimof, and Kateryna Moskalyuk documenting the war in Ukraine, and life on the other side of it. ‘For me, it is important to show what is happening in Ukraine now. Yes, there are many international journalists in Ukraine, covering the events daily. However, there is a big difference between pictures taken by journalists, temporarily coming to Ukraine, and photographers shooting in their home cities and towns. The latter know the context and have no opportunity to go back home to a safe place after completing their assignment’, Radchenko tells me over email from Lviv.
Most of the images were taken between 24 February and 21 March 2022. Radchenko adopts a stream of consciousness approach to understand the workings of memory during crisis. ‘The exposition is organised in such a way that among the photos of war and destruction one can find pictures of an earlier period taken in peaceful cities and towns. It is like our memory, where moments of life before the war emerge, but then we look around and wake up to our reality, our ruined cities and people killed in the streets’.
Supported by Photofusion, The Thin Line was put together in less than two weeks. Kim Shaw, Director of Photofusion said, ‘I had met Kateryna Radchenko at Photo London a few years ago. I thought I will email her and ask if there is anything we can do. She wrote back immediately and said she would love to show some of the work her artists were making right now’. Shaw understood the urgency of showing the work as things were unfolding in Ukraine. ‘We had no time, a week or so. She (Kateryna) is working under difficult circumstances, and I wondered if I could put her under that kind of pressure to ask her to do something this quickly. But she was up for it. All the files came over, we printed them at Photofusion, and turned it around in record time. I think for her and her photographers to know that, here in London, we are looking at the work they are making, talking about the situation, and supporting them in the way that a photo community can has meant a lot’.
I was struck by the ‘alternative’ location for The Thin Line. Safehouse 2 in Peckham Rye is an abandoned Victorian house that has often been used as a venue for photo and film shoots. One entering the venue I saw paint was peeling off the walls, the floors were uneven and not swept, the ceilings had exposed brickwork, tiles were dislodged from the fireplace, the stairs that led to the top floor were narrow and rickety, and a musty smell followed me as I navigated my way around the two floors. Safehouse 2 is a far cry from the pristine galleries one might associate with exhibitions. Opting for a location that carries in its name connotations of ‘safety’ and ‘shelter’ but is not sanitised or ‘pretty’ makes The Thin Line atmospheric. By displaying images – including that of a child on a swing in front of a destroyed building, fireman at work on a site from which thick clouds of smoke emanated, a man with a walker opposite a bridge split in half, and a woman looking at the ocean waiting to go for a swim – in a space characterised by disrepair, and a certain nostalgia about better times, The Thin Line becomes one with the space and vice versa.
This is an exhibition that is simple in its execution but straightforward in its intention. ‘We, Ukrainians, are trying to stop this war and defeat Putin’s regime, and we are paying a high price for this. We must tell our story to prevent it from happening ever again, or being silenced, or interpreted in the wrong way’, says Radchenko.
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(1) “Ukraine crisis: Zelensky warns of World War III, if talks with Russia fails”, published on Business Standard (business-standard.com) last updated 21 March 2022. https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/ukraine-crisis-zelensky-warns-of-world-war-iii-if-talks-with-russia-fails-122032100052_1.html
(2) “Refugees fleeing Ukraine (since 24 February 2022)*” Live updated tally, via Operational Data Portal. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine
The Thin Line will be available for viewing at Photofusion in August 2022.
Reviewed for Photomonitor by Shyama Laxman.
