Containing 80 Portraits, ‘Stop Tanks with Books’ Pleas for Broad, Sweeping Action in Ukraine
Lina in a nationwide costume, Orihovo-Vasylivka village, Donetsk (2018). Photographs © Mark Neville, courtesy of Nazraeli Press
Previous to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, British artist Mark Neville moved to Kyiv, a metropolis he traveled to ceaselessly from his residence in London since starting Stop Tanks with Books in 2016. The challenge, which culminates in a brand new 180-page quantity edited by David Firm and printed by Nazraeli Press, concerned documenting life within the nation by way of portraits of passersby on the road, households lounging on the seaside, and others dancing amongst energetic nightclub crowds.
Every {photograph} tethers a human face to the completely inhumane atrocities of warfare and “(weaponizes) the medium to impact change.” The photographs are intimate and profound, exhibiting a younger woman screaming right into a toy telephone following shelling in 2016 or a father and son cradling goats of their residence in Decyatny.
Alexsandr Konokov and Sasha on their Goat Farm in Decyatny, Zhytomyr Oblast, 2017
Neville’s intention for the challenge has all the time been twofold. He hoped to encourage broad, worldwide assist for Ukraine’s independence in Donbas and Crimea and to supply a crucial corrective to the stereotypical data and pictures disseminated by the Kremlin, which he noticed Western media sources usually redistributing with out context. “Cease Tanks With Books was my try and struggle Russian aggression,” Neville says.
Eighty of his portraits are positioned alongside analysis from the Centre of Japanese European Research in Berlin in regards to the 2.5 million individuals who had already been displaced by 2018, along with quick tales by Ukrainian poet and novelist Lyuba Yakimchuk that element life underneath Russian occupation in Donbas.
The pairings result in a name to motion written in each Ukrainian and English, one made extra pressing by the full-scale assault on the nation that’s taken thousands of civilian lives alone within the final three months. “I ponder what the worldwide response could be if Stockholm, London, Paris, or New York had been threatened with an unprovoked and imminent invasion by Russia? Our e book is a prayer and a crucial plea to the worldwide neighborhood,” Neville wrote earlier than the warfare formally started, when he additionally despatched copies of the e book to 750 policymakers, ambassadors, media members, and people concerned in peace talks. He hoped to boost consciousness in regards to the quick risk the folks of Ukraine confronted.
There are a number of copies of Cease Tanks with Books out there from Setanta Books, though a second version with a brand new foreword by Neville is in progress. You’ll find way more of the photographer’s activist-centered work, along with extra pictures from the collection, on his site. (through Lens Culture)
Boy with canine, Troitske, Luhansk (2019)
Couple at Stanytsia Luhanska Bridge (2019)
Ukrainsk, Donetsk (2021
Three Kilometres from the frontline, Donetsk (2019)
Policewomen, Mariupol (2019)
Kristina in Troyitske, Japanese Ukraine, an hour after the shelling (2016)
Maria Holubets, Natalia Tarasenko, Rozalia Boiko, Maria Shvanyk, and Rozalia Mahnyk on the Greek Catholic Monastery, Zvanivka (2018)
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