Donetsk as a Mirror
It’s 38 degrees and i wait for my assistant Ulya in the shadow of a statue of Lenin in the city centre square. A city is too complex to analyze in two dimensions and is an inevitable reflection of its observer. We can view a landscape with different emotions but the space is the same and i arrive damaged.
Ukraine’s present is informed by its terrible past and there is an inherent pessimism in its view of itself, it seems to seek solutions to its problems outside of itself, looking both east and west.
The historic use of flowers in art as metaphor for death and sexuality apply equally here but they also acknowledge the historical importance of Ukraine’s fertile soil and mineral wealth as a clue to where the recovery may come. All the subjects in the images (with one exception) are asked to stand in the soil beds rather than on the paths.
The city feels caught in flux between the lingering hangover from the Soviet past, and the seduction of Europe’s free market. It is irresistible not to play with elements of socialist realism and i ask the handsome man with a broken leg to look East.
I have an affinity with the hospital gardens and their fractured inhabitants. The juxtaposition of injured with the flowers, betrays my own damaged personality and I acknowledge that healing can only come from within.
Le Dormeur du Val – Arthur Rimbaud (English translation)
It’s a green hollow, where a river is singing
Crazily hanging on the grasses rags Of silver; where the sun, from the proud mountain, Is shinning: it’s a little valley bubbling with sunlight.
A young soldier, his mouth open, his head bare, And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue watercress, Is sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies, Pale in his green bed where the light falls like rain.
Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling like A sick child would smile, he takes a nap: Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold.
Fragrances do not make his nostrils quiver; He sleeps in the sun, hand on the breast, Peacefully. He has two red holes in his right side.
