“The most important thing at the place of fire is the person”. Photographer Heorhiy Ivanchenko has been documenting the war for the 3rd year. We talked about his work in Bakhmut

Before the full-scale war, photographer Heorhiy Ivanchenko was engaged in street photography. Already on February 25, 2022, he published his first photos related to the war. On them is a farewell in Lviv of a boy and a girl who went abroad from the war. Since then, Ivanchenko traveled around the entire front line, recorded many Russian war crimes, and lived in the city for two weeks during the battles for Bakhmut. His photos are regularly published by Western agencies and media, including the Washington Post and the Associated Press. We met with Heorhiy in Kharkiv to talk for the Babel project "War Through the Eyes of Journalists". Watch the full version of the conversation on our YouTube channel. Here are the key points of the conversation.

In the third year of the war, people saw a lot. Now they are much less affected by painful photos from the war.

To show the war in a slightly different way, I started to use the flash — to highlight what is in the shadows. Later, I tried to use a door window as a lens. It distorts the space in a very unusual way and shows everything from a completely different angle. However, it is important to simply continue filming the war. At least because over the years these photos can become a document and record of events.

I try to take pictures of all the shelling of Kharkiv, at least if it takes no more than 20 minutes to get to the place of impact.

Thatʼs when the most important, culminating and terrible thing happens at the place of "strike": there are wounded people and rescuers. The most important thing to do after "strikes" is to rescue the wounded. And from my side — to film it. Because often the consequences of strikes are shown to be broken houses, rip-offs, etc. But the most important and most terrible thing in all this is man. It shows that it is not just a crushed building, but a person, a victim.

When a fire breaks out after a shelling, I try to stay as close as possible to the firemen. My lens doesnʼt have a zoom, so I have to be close, sometimes inside a building. There were cases when the room was completely filled with smoke, the exit was temporarily blocked, and the rescuers and I were without gas masks. Sometimes it seemed that you could not get out. However, this is the only way to really convey everything, to show reality and the person who extinguishes the fire.

In war, there is no clear line between what can be photographed and what is not — everything is very situational.

It is important to photograph the dead after shelling. The question is whether to show the dead personʼs face. For example, in June 2024, I filmed the consequences of shelling in the center of Kharkiv, when a woman died at a bus stop. She was covered with a blanket. I decided to photograph only her bright red shoes and her feet, which were lying on the curb. And this is enough to understand that this is a tragedy. However, I personally cannot film a funeral. For me, this is something very important, but at the same time very personal.

Photographing the wounded is important, even if the person has not given explicit permission.

First, the "strike" locations or war zones are often chaos, so itʼs almost impossible to ask about it. Often, in this chaos, eye contact is enough, that is, for a person to simply visually identify the photographer. Secondly, if we wait for confirmation, then such photos simply would not exist and people would not see what is happening. Of course, you shouldnʼt take photos if they directly ask you not to take pictures, but such cases are rare.

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