Signs of time
When Russia started to invade Ukraine on 24th February 2022, Odessa-based photographer Viacheslav Onyshchenko felt paralysed and scared. Taking pictures and documenting his hometown was his way of coping with the fear and switching off from the constant news and media reports. Instead of photographing the evidence of the war, his work shows the ‘new normal’, the surreal everyday life of people in Odessa.
Text and Photography Viacheslav Onyshchenko
I was born and have lived all my life in Odessa. This is the place that I love and hate at the same time very much.
The feeling of war was in the air at the beginning of 2022, but it still came as a complete shock and surprise in the early hours of February 24th. There was a feeling of paralysis and fear. The only thing that helped me break away from constantly reading the news and listening to explosions outside the window was the thought that I simply had to photograph it all. Two thoughts motivated me to leave the house: 1. What if I die right now – what will remain? 2. How will other people find out about what happened in my hometown?
“The only thing that helped me break away from constantly reading the news and listening to explosions outside the window was the thought that I simply had to photograph it all.”
In this project I do not show direct evidence of the war (missile hits, fires, funerals, etc., which I naturally photographed a lot), but I try to reflect on how the war has become a part of everyday routine and has become a new normal.
At the beginning of its journey, everything seemed so new and interesting, everything was like part of the props and decorations for filming films.
Much that surrounds me in the modern urban landscape has become different and will not be the same as before.
Other signs of outdoor advertising and graffiti, sealed windows, anti-tank hedgehogs, beach signs, red barrier tapes, announcements with addresses of bomb shelters, barricades on the streets, sandbags are an integral part of the new everyday life that we have got used to and it is not surprising us.
What else can we get used to? At what point did it all become so common?
Having been finding images for my project in the city for almost 2 years, I still don’t know the answers to these questions.
About Viacheslav
Viacheslav Onyshchenko was born in 1988 in Odesa, Ukraine. He started taking pictures in 2012 and has been a member of the National union of journalists of Ukraine since 2020. Viacheslav is an open mic participant at the Odesa Photo Days Festival (2018, 2020) and collaborates with SOPA images, Global Images Ukraine, IMAGOpress amd the Center for Urban History.
To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Facebook
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