I happened to see two Ukraine-related exhibits in Montreal. One is well advertised and widely covered by the media. The other is of a local, diaspora-scale, nature. But the latter seems to be no less important than the former.
World Press Photo is an annual exhibit of the prize winners of a homonymous documentary photo competition. It is held in the historic Old Port of Montreal.
World Press Photo always broaches the most difficult and acute problems. Of course, it displays such categories as portrait, nature, sport, and entertainment, but what brought this competition controversial and great fame was pictures taken at the places of military operations, mass-scale natural and manmade disasters, and epidemics.
Visitors can see the mass graves of Ebola victims, a thermobaric explosion somewhere in Syria, a boat overcrowded with refugees in the Adriatic. Extremely strong is a cycle by an American, Glenna Gordon – she just photographed the belongings of the Nigerian girls abducted last April by the terrorist group Boko Haram, as well as a spot news series by Arash Khamooshi (Iran) about a mother who forgave the murderer of her son, thus saving him from the gallows. Tenderness and drama permeate pictures by Sarker Protick (Bangladesh) who photographed the everyday life of his grandfather and grandmother. The hall is always full of people. What constantly draws the crowds are stands with photographs from Ukraine.
Five pictures by the French author Jerome Sessini (2nd prize in the Spot News category) are about the Maidan. Blood-stained bodies on Instytutska Street, a priest who blesses a protester – the presence effect is almost unbearable.
Next to this is Serhii Ilnytsky’s already famous disaster-portraying ‘still life’ (1st prize in the News category) – a dinner table strewn with broken glass and dust in a Donetsk kitchen as a result of artillery fire. Another photo by Sessini is about the downed Boeing (1st prize in Spot News) – the horrible and too well-known pictures of a passenger’s body that went through the roof and lies on the house floor, the resident of this house, who bent his head lowly, leaning out of the window; the perplexed coalminers in a sunflower field. There is a detailed caption under each photo. People slow down, look, and read. I spoke to some Canadian spectators and tried to explain to them our situation. They showed understanding and empathy. No matter where a war is, it strikes any conscious person who is able to sympathize. The main thing is to put across a clear and easy-to-grasp message about this war – which World Press Photo pictures do.
The other exhibit is in a rather interesting place. The local cell of the Ukrainian National Federation is located in a former Hasidic synagogue. It is a redbrick structure of a typically ritual Judaic architecture – only there is a trident on the facade, where a menorah used to be. Inside, there is an exposition about the coexistence of Jews and Ukrainians from the times of Kyivan Rus’ to those of Petliura and Skoropadsky. It comprises over 30 stands with illustrations and texts in French and English. It shows all the good and bad landmark events: the horrors of the Khmelnytsky era, the Uman massacre, the 19th-20th-century pogroms, as well as the growth of prosperous towns, the peaks of Jewish culture, Sholom Aleichem and Jabotinsky, a joint struggle against Russian imperial enslavement.
This exhibit, its venue, and the young English-speaking Jewish receptionist Tamara – all this inspires a lot of hope. Having such a rich and controversial common history, which sometimes looks like a never-ending battle, we can still live in friendship with Jews. But it takes a lot of ability and wisdom to live in harmony (and to admit one’s mistakes) – it is a true right of the strong. And it is in fact a path to victory in the cruelest war.
