Lobby and second level installation through 8 September 2024
Oleksandr Glyadelov’s photographic exhibition features sites and events documented by him across Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The images function as timestamps profoundly recording the devastation and survival during the ongoing war. Glyadelov captures urban scenes and rural settlements often just hours after the destruction. His images instantaneously elicit memories of traumatic news from Irpin, Bucha, Borodianka, Izium, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Moshchun, Kyiv, Kherson, Bakhmut… Glyadelov’s empathetic presence is felt in the startling scenes of life that unravel in the shelters of Ohmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital; in the yards of solitary villagers who decided to stay and rebuild their households; on the routes of evacuation and at the sites of military encampment. The landscapes in his photographs are charged with historical grief and insight, forever altered by the imposed violence, much like a Dnipro estuary pictured on several images in this exhibition where freshwater and saltwater meet.
Born in 1956 in Legnica, Poland, Oleksandr Glyadelov has lived and worked in Kyiv since 1974. He graduated from the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.” His work addresses humanitarian crises, child homelessness, HIV/AIDS, drugs addiction, prisons, and military conflicts. Over the years he has cooperated with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and many others. Since 1989, as an independent professional photojournalist, he has covered military conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Ukraine. He deliberately photographs with an analogue camera on black-and-white film. Glyadelov is the winner of the 2020 Shevchenko Prize.
