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6 No.20 MARCH 29, 2018 CLOSE UP WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA “What unites these pictures is something more than the pain of war” An interview with the Italian photojournalist who visited Ukraine three times during the war ROBERTO TRAVAN UKRAINIAN SOLDIER, SERHII By Yulia YARUCHYK Photos courtesy of Roberto TRAVAN il prossimo tuo” is the name of an exhibit in Turin, Italy, which displays 110 photographs, including 15 taken in Ukraine. Here, “A(r)ma the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento has brought together the destinies of people from different countries and continents. What unites them is one terrible word – war. The authors of the pictures – Paolo Siccardi and Roberto Travan – are well-known Italian photojournalists who usually work in the world’s “hot spots.” Travan, the author of 15 Ukrainian pictures, works for the Italian newspaper La Stampa. It is he who hit upon the idea of DEBALTSEVE, 2016 organizing this high-profile exposition. Roberto says what unites these pictures is something more than war. Faith, religion, God or what is left of God in a real war – this thin, sometimes invisible, thread goes through the pictures taken at different times in Afghanistan and Israel, Ukraine and Syria, African countries, and the Caucasus. It is difficult to translate the exhibit’s name into English without losing the meaning. In Italian, “Arma il prossimo tuo” (“Arm thy neighbor”) is almost consonant with the biblical “Ama il prossimo tuo” (“Love thy neighbor”). Travan has visited Ukraine three times during the armed conflict, mostly as a freelance photographer. The journalist is going to visit eastern Ukraine this year, too. The Day spoke to Roberto about the importance of the exhibit’s Ukrainian part, Ukraine in the Italian media space, and the importance of photography as a genre in journalism. Roberto, you chose a picture taken in Ukraine for the exhibit’s billboard. It looks like all the publications that wrote about the exhibit carried the photo of a Ukrainian soldier. This photo became the exhibit’s “hallmark” of sorts. “Yes, that’s true. The story of this picture is incredible and dramatic. It shows a Ukrainian soldier, Serhii, whom I met near Donetsk. The photo expresses two essential elements of the exhibit – war and faith. Serhii stood by a ruined industrial facility with a Kalashnikov gun in hand and a cross in the front pocket – I saw it at once. Serhii and I saw each other just for a few seconds because this photo was taken under fire. We ran away in different directions without even getting to know each other better. In a month or so I published this photo in Facebook and, unfortunately, received sad news from a Ukrainian colleague who also worked with me in the Donbas – Serhii had died in action. Naturally, my photographer friends in Ukraine, to whom I also sent the photo, know about our exhibit. It went viral in Facebook and the internet as a whole. A few days ago Serhii’s daughter wrote to me, asking to send her all of her father’s pictures that I have. It is difficult to describe what I felt at the moment. It seemed to me that I’d reopened this girl’s wound. For we, photo reporters, photograph war and see the same war on these pictures, rarely thinking that these people have a private life, interests, and feelings outside the war. “Unfortunately, he is not the only soldier on my photos, who is no longer among us. And it’s not simple. Photographers, journalists ought to take a neutral attitude to these events, but it is impossible to remain indifferent in these conditions.” You’ve photographed armed conflicts in various countries, on different continents. What do you think singles Ukraine out? “What impressed me the most is the cohesion of Ukrainians in this war and solidarity of civilians who do not stand clear of the armed conflict and are also fighting – just in other ways. I visited a lot of Donetsk region villages and met many local residents. The conditions they are living in are terrible. But these people chose to stay behind on their native land in spite of everything. “I was also struck very much with the fact that the whole country helps these frontline residents and the military. The daily work of volunteers, who gather food, clothes, and medicines, is also nothing but another way of fighting in this war.” This exhibit is of paramount importance. La Stampa is one of the few publications that did and do write about events in Ukraine. Other Italian media cover this topic limitedly and unwillingly. “Hundreds of people have visited the exhibit in the past two weeks. The exhibit was to last until May, but, owing to great public interest, it was decided to extend it until September. Maybe, we’ll manage to hold it in Rome next year. My observations show that Ukrainian photos form one of the most interesting parts of the exposition for spectators. Of course, the main objective of the exhibit is to make society reflect on war as such and to remind that a lot of armed conflicts are now going on in the world. These conflicts have been dragging on for years and, maybe for this reason, are becoming invisible to peaceful countries. You are right that the Ukraine war is little spoken of. Yes, but little is also being said about the wars in South Sudan, Nagorno- Karabakh, etc. People are just concerned about other problems, and wars seem to be far away.” Photography is extremely important to The Day as a genre of journalism and a way to put certain ideas across to readers. What can you say about Italian publications? “I think photography is no less important to Italian publications. It must be a demand of time. The speedy development of the internet has provided an opportunity to inform readers by means of a greater amount of visual information, for the print media are elementarily short of space. Sometimes one picture can say more that a big text. A photo can draw the attention of a much broader audience. There is no language barrier here. So, I think photography as a genre can have a dramatic impact on the information space we have.”
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA CULT URE No.20 MARCH 29, 2018 7 From the past to the future THE AUTHORS OF RUSSOPHOBIA ARE PLAYWRIGHTS VARVARA FAER AND MAKSYM KUROCHKIN The international project Russophobia was shown on Stage 6. The content was created by a Finnish-Russian-Ukrainian team By Svitlana AHREST-KOROTKOVA Photos courtesy of the theater Having quickly won not only Kyivan audiences, but also visitors from other cities to their side, founders of the new theater space called Stage 6 surprised and pleased the public once again. For two days, the stage was “occupied” by the international project Russophobia. The content was created by a Finnish-Russian-Ukrainian team. The original idea, created by the director of the Moscow Teatr.Doc Varvara Faer, underwent serious changes after the Ukrainian playwright Maksym Kurochkin joined the project and drew historic parallels between what was happening 80 years ago to the nation of Finland, small but aspiring to obtain sovereignty and independence from its big neighbor, and today’s events in Ukraine. Fears and experience, hopes and reflections of the play’s characters, who are simple, ordinary people, are directly related to the themes of the long-past Winter War and the war lately unleashed by the former “brother” in Ukraine. The Theater of Documentary Play, known as Teatr.Doc, was created in 2002 by several playwrights working in the genre of documentary theater. This is a special genre that exists at the intersection of art and topical social analysis. The theater’s creative teams make performances based on meetings with real people and dealing with the most relevant and timely issues of the surrounding reality. They use testimonies of real people, the verbatim technique, “deep improvisation,” theatrical games and trainings. Participation in prestigious theatrical festivals, both in its homeland and around Europe, has not only failed to protect the theater from rejection by the current Russian regime, but become a litmus test for it. Still, the theater is alive and keeps up its good work, which should be treated as an act of civic virtue these days, in my opinion. “ALL OVER RUSSIA, PEOPLE GO DOWN FOR WORDS. WORDS ARE IMPORTANT AGAIN. BUT IT SEEMS TO ME WE DREAMED OF A DIFFERENT FUTURE.” RUSSOPHOBIA, STAGE 6 According to the special genre nature of the theater, Russophobia shows an old man, his body bent down with life’s pains, remembering how his child self faced a man flying a red-starred airplane and trying to shoot him dead with a machine gun. Meanwhile, our contemporary, who lives in Kyiv, cannot forgive himself for his absence during the Maidan protest, because he was furnishing his long-awaited mortgaged apartment in Moscow. In parallel, he recalls the many occasions when he and the entire country of ours left unanswered spitting and slapping into face: from allegations about “stolen oil” to the Budapest Memorandum ultimately proving worthless. After all, there had been bad omens, blood had been shed for a long time, starting in the Baltic States that were the first to do away with the Sovietism, through Chechnya and the territories stolen from Georgia, and ending with the “polite green men” in Crimea. According to the playwright, the most difficult thing for him was to realize how totally calm people could be amid historical upheavals. And this became a chance to speak out on a topic that deeply worries him. The show premiered in Tampere at the end of last year. The Finnish version was titled Rajavirhe (A Border Incident). However, the play’s structure and text are the same as it is staged in Finland, Russia, and Ukraine. The cast was the troupe of one of Finland’s most famous independent theaters, the Telakka, which was named the best theater of the year in 2016. Its artists are known far beyond the country. For example, Tomi Salmela starred in Jim Jarmusch’s film Night on Earth. In the project which was seen in Kyiv, the artists, too, delighted the public with appropriate performance of their parts and high professionalism, despite the documentary theater being a quite difficult genre. We managed to have a short talk with Varvara Faer, who is the director of the Teatr.Doc and the aforementioned performance. Originally, the project was conceived as a retelling of the Finns’ memories about the war between their country and the USSR. It was a completely different story, one dealing with the attitude of a giant country to the world around. That attitude was unfair... With the participation of the Ukrainian playwright Maksym Kurochkin, the narrative of that war came to be seen from some completely different perspectives, as revisions of history feelings gradually yielded to dealing with the explosive point of today’s reality, which is Ukraine. Memories of the past have smoothly turned into forecasts for the future. The play has already been staged in Finland and in Ukraine, and there will be a premiere in Moscow in two days [interview was taken on March 23. – Ed.]. By the way, the latter is a challenge to the prevailing attitude there. What are your impressions of the European and Ukrainian audiences’ perception of the events happening on stage, and your assumptions about the reaction of the Russian audience? “Yes, Finland and Ukraine have already seen the complete show, and we held a reading rehearsal in Moscow a year ago. In Finland, opinions were divided and ranged from enthusiastic to deeply indignant ones. Portions of the public, about a half of it, consider this play to be a piece of propaganda, and they do not like it. I think it applies not only to Finland, but to Europe in general. They want to think independently. They believe that not everything is so clear-cut, and maybe, Vladimir Putin is right about something. They say you need to look into the matter, to give it a thought, as nothing is 100 percent black or white. The second half pays attention to my objective with which I did this show – an outburst of emotions rather than an analytical reflection. Living emotion, human feelings, attention to history’s landmarks are important there. They are present in the context not for decoration, but as some highly important accents that must not be missed. “The Ukrainian audience was more unanimous. Even the artists noted that the public was fantastically attentive, and this filled them with incredible energy. By the way, we have already been invited to tour all over Ukraine with this show. I hope to see you again. I can breathe so easily in your country... Let us see how the performance in Moscow will go in a day, but the reading rehearsal was very well received. One must take into account here that the Teatr.Doc caters to an opposition-minded audience, it is they who will come to watch the show.” But what about your “persistent admirers” from the FSB? “Do you think they will come? We will see...”
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