Photographs That Show the Whimsy and Eros of Ukraine before the War

In images made before the Russian invasion in 2022, three photographers preserve social memory—and witness a nation striving to define its sovereignty.

via Aperture: https://aperture.org/editorial/the-photographers-who-showed-the-whimsy-and-eros-of-ukraine-before-the-war/

Working in black and white with one camera, Chekmenev took the official passport-format headshots of weary visages against a portable white backdrop; while using a wide-angle camera with color film, he captured all that lay beyond in photographs that would eventually form the series Passport (1995). “I saw that the frame needed to be widened,” he told me recently. The photographs represent a people entrenched in an old Soviet system that cared little for, deceived, and effectively abandoned the individual. Depicting a generation trapped in time, the pictures teeter on the precipice of uncertainty.