Analysis of fine-art photography techniques in representing the tragedy of war in Ukraine using Serhii Belinskyi's works
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/AI/2023/25/22Keywords:
art photography techniques, war in Ukraine, symbolic meaning, Serhii BelinskyiAbstract
Technical achievements have made it possible to observe the tragic events of war in Ukraine both in real time and in the distribution of photos and videos, which become the property of the whole world via the Internet. Despite the fact that there is a lot of visual information illustrating these events, avant-garde methods of conveying the horrors of war can be distinguished. In particular, such methods are used by one of the authors of the article, Serhii Belinskyi, who is a fine-art photographer and a press officer of the Knights of the Winter Campaign 28th mechanized brigade during the war. His original peacetime style consisted in presenting the world through inanimate objects, nature and animals, or by presenting fragments of the human body (legs, hands, often with light effects).
We will omit his official photos on the brigade’s website and only analyze the use of avant‑garde proprietary techniques during the war. Only photos featuring inanimate objects, nature and animals, as well as those representing fragments of human bodies (legs, hands) have been selected for the analysis. The following techniques can be distinguished in them:
- using an unusual angle from below (showing the Easter blessing through rows of soldiers’ feet)
- giving symbolic meaning to ordinary objects (an icon in a ruined church, a road sign, a sewn-up heart, a book of fairy tales, a flowering tree in front of a tank)
- introducing intentional asymmetry of the frame plane and a change of the direction of looking – not from left to right, but from right to left (a cow by a destroyed cowshed)
- presenting a fragmentary image of a human body part, in this case belonging to military personnel (legs, arms)
- using contrasts of light and shadow
- demonstrating the war with weapons and military equipment
- supplementing the photo with a caption explaining the artist's main idea
The use of these techniques means that such photographs turn into tragic art for the photographer.
How do art photographers see the world? The peculiarities of Serhii Belinskyi's vision of the world are as follows:
- conveying one's own emotions through inanimate objects, landscapes, and animals, i.e., a "world without people"
- photography as a means of psychological protection against the trauma of war, as the artist maximally concentrates on the frame.
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