nudity.slip

"SELO". Stories from before the after.

Added 2025-06-17 17:00:08 +0000 UTC

I was planning to follow a chronological order — to start sharing everyday life photos I took after that one special meeting in June, the moment everything shifted and I began photographing again with full force.

But before that, there are a few dozen photos I took earlier. And I’d still love to share them.

Like these ones.

This is the village — the place where my parents lived after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. During that time, I felt an urge to shoot more project-based work, to stop being stingy with film or frames and just document whatever touched me — whatever caught my eye, made me laugh, confused me, moved me.

For me, the village has always been a place where you become “nobody” — in the best possible way. Even if you earn millions, once you’re there, you shower in an outdoor stall, go to the toilet outside, dig up potatoes, and can tomatoes for winter. Because in a place like that, status doesn’t work. The land doesn’t care. It requires your physical presence.

(Of course, there are more modern villages, especially closer to cities — but I’m talking about a real village, where everyone knows everyone, where the alcoholic neighbor will dig your potatoes for a bottle of vodka, where people show up to weddings and funerals uninvited, where someone’s son-in-law is a local official who can “help with anything,” where most people are distantly related.)

Both of my parents were born in villages — my dad in Kyiv region, my mom in Odesa region. They were raised with a deep respect for the land and physical labor. (I didn’t quite inherit that.)

I remember how we used to spend summers at my grandparents’ place, planting potatoes — four kids, four adults, and two grandparents. We split into teams, picked a row, and raced to see who’d finish planting fastest. My parents were inventive like that. It’s actually one of my brightest memories from village life.

Well, that and the time a huge stag beetle blocked the path to the outhouse at night, and I was terrified to walk past it in case it attacked me.

But this story isn’t about childhood memories.

These photos are not memories. They’re a record of the village during war. And the war here isn’t seen in ruins or explosions. It’s in the expressions of my loved ones. It’s in the forced simplicity of daily life. It’s in having no options, no jobs, no clarity. It’s not their perspective — it’s mine.

In these frames you’ll see:

– my grandfather, who’s been bedridden for three years after breaking his leg;

– a messy, cluttered kitchen — despite the fact that my mom is a total clean freak. She literally can’t stand mess, but for various reasons, this is what she’s had to live in;

– a bucket with a dolphin-shaped lid that became the winter toilet;

– kids caroling on Christmas Eve;

– washing laundry without a real washing machine…

This is the village — with all its flaws and charm, its logic and contradictions. This is the village during war, and the people who, unwillingly, had to live there. It’s a life spent waiting to return home.

Spoiler: they finally moved back to Mykolaiv in September. Not because it became safe — but because it was time to stop waiting and start choosing again.

And yes, I’m happy they went back. But I also felt a little… sad. I had just begun photographing this project. I thought maybe, if I kept going, it could grow into a small book. There was still so much I wanted to capture — and I didn’t visit often. But it happened the way it happened. Which means — maybe that’s exactly how it was meant to be.