Ukraine Images

As I sit at home writing this post, people are going to the poll or not in the Crimea, voting on whether to go for greater autonomy inside Ukraine or to return to Russia, which they were part of before Kruschev gave them away in 1954. Or not, because some people are said to be boycotting the vote as neither of the two alternatives represents their wish to remain in the present arrangement.

There seem to me to be only very limited situations where boycotting a vote can be an effective tactic, though I wouldn’t presume to give the guys in the Crimea any specific advice. Here in the UK, most people don’t bother to vote in most elections, though its rather apathy than boycott that gets the greatest support in almost every poll. But I do think this would be at least a slightly healthier democracy if on every voting paper there was the option ‘none of the above.’

I’ve been glad these last few weeks that I’m not one of those photojournalists who flies out to trouble spots to report on them, though I have been impressed by the work of those who do.  Paris-based photojournalist, Alfred Yaghobzadeh, was on the ground in Kiev documenting the events from the day after things kicked off, and on LensCulture you can see an in-depth showing of his work, with 87 colour images and 105 black and white pictures.

It’s interesting to see the work like this, and there are some fine images. Kiev seems to have brought out a huge number of memorable and spectacular images from a great many photographers, but looking at the work of just one person is in some ways more revealing and gives a greater insight into what things were really like. The same is also true for videos such as Vice New’s Ukraine Burning with camera work mainly by Phil Caller (along with three others who from their names are probably Ukrainian.) Once you have got over the rather annoying interviewer (Vice Magazine seems to revel in the annoying, perhaps it worries it might have to change its name otherwise) it’s an interesting film – and again makes me feel glad not to have been there.

Caller is someone I used to find myself often covering events in London with a few years ago, when he was still working mainly with still images, but starting also to take video. Had I then been at a similar stage in my career to him it is a decision I would quite likely have felt I had to make also, if only to earn a living. Keeping on taking only still pictures – and keeping on putting my stories on Demotix are luxuries I’m in a position to afford after over 40 years of work.

There are things the still image does better, preserving a moment and bringing it to our attention in a way that doesn’t happen in a movie – unless perhaps you introduce a still frame. But that becomes an ‘effect’ in the way that a still image isn’t, and one that alters the nature of a film.

Looking at Yaghobzadeh’s work I found myself wondering why he had chosen to take some of the images as black and white. The square format is great for most of the portraits, but in some of the other images I found myself thinking that they would almost certainly have been better in colour. There are some exceptions, mainly those images with a strong element of design.

Of course many photographers now who present their work as black and white have actually taken these as colour, but I think that Yaghobzadeh was working with film, and from the format of the images, with medium format.  One of the things that attracts me, at least in principle, to working with cameras with an electronic viewfinder – such as the Fuji x-E1 – is that you can work with an monochrome image in the finder, while still if you are saving images in AW, have all the colour information still present should you later decide you would prefer to have a colour picture. But I say in principle, because although I’ve taken a few thousands of images on the camera I’ve yet  to take a single one as monochrome. I’ve still too got a cupboard with a shelf full of black and white film (now all rather outdated) but somehow I feel that photography and I have moved on.

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