One of the permanent subjects of Nazar Furyk‘s photographic practice is the urbanscape and both the private and the collective street processions that take place in it. The cities imaged in his works prior to February 24, 2022 were often filled with lively ceremonialism and vivid rituals constituted by crowds. People persist as a subject of interest for the artist, however, in his works immediately following the outbreak of the Russian full-scale invasion against Ukraine, these same cities notably begin to appear deserted, and their landscapes have profoundly changed.

The works selected for this publication are from the first months of the invasion, and are presented in two clusters: the ruined landscape of the deoccupied cities of Irpin and Bucha, and the less devastated space of Kyiv and Lviv full of defensive structures. Single pedestrians on the depicted Ukrainian streets are captured by the fragility of their current surroundings, in which they can only face the present by their daily resilience. Even now, nine months after Russia’s initial assault, the war machinery detaches citizens from planning anything for tomorrow, while also stealing their memory of peace. This peace has been degraded in different phases, first with the 2014 occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and now with the of the full-scale invasion. Simultaneously, cities appear either as a pile of ruins, colonized by the gaze of Western journalists, or as sculptural and architectural heritage hidden by sandbags and metal sheets, in constant anticipation of a possible explosion.

Nazar Furyk is an artist and independent photographer born in Kolomyia. He lives and works in Kyiv. He studied architecture at the Kyiv College of Architecture and Design, and engineering sciences at the Šiauliai State University (Lithuania). Furyk has taken part in personal and group exhibitions in Ukraine, Great Britain, Latvia, Korea, Poland, Canada, France, USA, Portugal. You can find out more about his work at nazarfuryk.com. 

Published 8 December 2022