AIn this photo we see Ruslana Danilkina from Odessa. She is 19 years old and she is one of the most well-known war victims in Ukraine. I've seen hundreds of pictures of her. There are now so many seriously injured people that we no longer just have to fight for survival and rehabilitation. A new aesthetic becomes part of her return to life. A form of subculture even emerges. Photography becomes a form of therapy and inclusion.
The photographer Marta Syrko from Lviv shows people with amputees in her black and white series “Sculptures”, some of them are lightly draped in a tunic, some of them have a naked torso without arms – as if they were created in ancient times. A woman snuggles up to an athletic man with two stumps. Her husband is back from the war. Can you photograph what they feel? Unfortunately, the reference to antiquity is there. The dimension of what is happening in Ukraine, the fate of the people, what is increasingly perceived as “doom” leads directly to this.
The “Terrible-Beautiful”
The slightly erotic, the almost naked, “horribly beautiful” nature of this picture captivates and irritates me. I think of the wooden puppets of the Royal de Luxe street theater group that are paraded through the cities and everyone becomes Lilliputians, like in Gulliver's Travels. Ruslana's figure, her feet, the folds of the tunic, the fused structures in the reflection resemble the sculptures of the Baroque artist Johann Georg Brush, who transformed the drama of the movement into wood and who worked in Lviv in the 18th century, where the photographer is now Marta Syrko is alive.
Almost exactly a year ago, on February 10, 2023, Rusja Danilkina came under fire, suddenly holding her own leg in her hands. She suffered a shock of pain and only realized it when she saw her comrade's tears. Rusja, Ruslana, who now goes by the nickname “The Inflexible One”, had signed up as a volunteer, she didn’t want to accept any paperwork and asserted her desire to go to the front. Their task was to record information, both about the enemy's shells and about injured and dead Ukrainian soldiers. One of the first pictures with Rusja that I noticed was a fashion series: strict lines, simple colors. Her metallic leg shone. I wondered if public attention would ease her phantom pains. Then I thought that her artificial leg had become some kind of accessory, something that was worn “fashionably” – that’s how you “wear it” now.
The aesthetics of many of Danilkina's images – and even more so those of injured people with state-of-the-art biosensory arm prostheses – are close to cyberculture, they obviously draw from a source. I thought of Lara Croft and asked my Kiev friends. They told me that the prosthetic images were based on Johnny Mnemonic, they also mentioned “The Matrix”, computer games like “Deus Ex” and some comic characters.
Injury and amputation are experienced as a human being. But it also happens to the body of the country, which tries with all its might to defend itself against the crippling term “invalid” and not to treat its own people as “mutilated” from the nightmares of Otto Dix. There are hundreds of large and small centers for amputation, prosthetics and rehabilitation in Ukraine, the most famous is in Lviv and is called “Superhumans”. The center employs leading surgeons from around the world, engages fundraising “ambassadors,” and helps people with prostheses feel at the forefront of modern technology and science. Superhumans tries to turn society's attitude around, because superhumans are those who, in the most difficult situations, have found the strength to remain human, to return to active life.
PS: As I write this text, people are dying again in Kiev, hit by a Russian missile: three dead, thirty injured. At the same time, the new law on mobilization is passed. Ukraine lacks men. You can't think about war while you're at war, it always overtakes you.
#Katja #Petrovskaya #Ruslana #Danilkina
