ON AMAZING HUMANENESS

On awe-inspiring humaneness

He adds that any supper is a extra outcome. “One e'er chooses who to sit with at the mesa. It was a enceinte award for me to sit in the midriff,” the Rev. Dmytriiev sums up.

“I and the soldiers are not assumption to the purpose of Messiah and apostles, severally. For any Finis Supper is an false. We had a Death Supper of our own. We birth our own secrets, recollections, and prayers to God.

And for our servicemen, the church, which we repute upright honey, is incessantly introduce on the front. They implore in their own way, may belong unlike Christian denominations, and, mayhap, do not attend church every Sunday, but they all deliver dear for masses done dearest for God. Our army is grand by gamy morals and bang for masses. They are not punishers or killers,” the Rev.

Dmytriiev says to The Day.

The priest held 4 Easterly services in the e and brought the military 1,200 Easterly egg which volunteers had been dyeing all dark foresightful, Six century Easterly breads, mattresses, chocolates, java, etcetera. “It is authoritative for me to halt in ghost with those I met on the death Easterly Day, and I bequeath be support them as foresighted as I can,” the priest says.

“In France, almost nobody discusses the war in eastern Ukraine,” Bilak says. “We have our own problems, such as terrorism. When there’s no bloodshed, people forget everything quickly. But I would say the mentality of the French has changed. Earlier, there was a very strong impact of Russian propaganda, but now the situation is different. French journalists in Moscow have found people who are paid for writing propaganda in social networking sites.

They interviewed a woman who said she had worked for the Kremlin for several months. Her job was to leave all kinds of propagandistic comments in social websites. But she was disgusted with these lies in a few months, and she quit this ‘job.’ The French read this, and something changed in their perception of this conflict in eastern Ukraine.

They have understood that there is such thing as propaganda and they came under its influence.

“I visited military hospitals in Kyiv and talked to the hurt. I saw a immature legless soldier thither – the like as my begetter formerly was. I matte as if I were in a meter car, as if I had ground myself in two unlike clip spans – the metre my begetter was bedfast and the clock this young Ukrainian is in hospital.

This was a very stunning moment for me. All I am looking when I attend the ATO zone is people who are eyewitnesses to history.”

“This photograph was interpreted on Easterly Day in Donetsk oblast a few kilometers from the front. I worn-out a hebdomad thither. We lived at a first-aid place.

This gave us a luck to unify with and fulfil the soldiers. In the center of the painting is Forefather Serhii Dmytriiev. It is he who invited me to travelling with him to the ATO zona,” Youry Bilak says to The Day. “On Easterly Day, he held a servicing for the military, and when the soldiers stood by the board aft the liturgy, I saw this vista.

As a lensman, I similar picture much and whenever I am winning a exposure, I try to uncovering an analogy with picture. So, when I saw these military by the defer with priest in the midriff, this snap came to me on its own. I was not implementing an thought of mine – I scarce frozen a mo.”

“I’M Looking EYEWITNESSES TO HISTORY”

Bilak went e conjointly the Rev. Serhii Dmytriiev (visualized in the center in spot of Messiah). It is the priest who suggested the lensman to see the front-line Easterly Day. “I am conversationally called chaplain of the 1st Plurality, Thirtieth Separated Motorized Brigade. This is my s Easterly therein multitude.

The outset was in the Kherson part, and this one in Donetsk oblast. I’ve known many of these guys for more a twelvemonth, and they are really love to me,” the Rev. Dmytriiev says. “Over thither on the movement, the boys became more dangerous and more witting of their religion and relatives. They prayed for their families and killed comrades…”

Youry Bilak, a French lensman of Ukrainian inception, visited the ATO district on Easterly Day. On orgasm habitation, he posted a picture on mixer networking sites, which exploded the Net in a twinkling. Cast a glint at it, everyone instantly says: “It is the Conclusion Supper.” This shows the gravid symbolisation and mightiness of this calm.

“I Pic NOT AN Case BUT THE Mass WHO Participate IN IT”

“My first trip to the ATO zone was rather fast and brief. I visited Artemivsk, Sloviansk, and Kramatorsk, I was on the highway that leads to Debaltseve,” Youry says. “I’d never photographed war or worked in an environment like this. I was struck with the atmosphere.

The army was something abstract for me. But here I saw that the army means soldiers each of whom is a life, ideas, habits, dreams – it is a family. When I arrived, I began to mingle with the military.

It was winter, it was frosty. We kindled a makeshift stove and sat around it to chat. We joked.

It was a discovery to me. I saw and felt this amazing humaneness.”

The lensman says that, in the cause of this pic, he was sole a watcher who managed to pinch a bit. “Usually, when I do art photography, I don’t use this camera with which I took this ikon. It’s not so superiority. At that consequence, the wide-frame photograph camera I requisite was in the car.

I saw this scenery and mentation: should I run that camera or issue a injection with this one? Thither was such a composure ambience, everything was so born. I was afraid that piece I was operative for the came, this air would fly.

So, I took a stroke with this camera not to fille the import,” Youry says riant.

This is not Bilak’s alone photo with the Ukrainian military, which makes allusions to artworks. “In another edifice, I took a pic on the analogy of Ilya Repin’s photo Response of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. I asked the soldiers to sit at the tabularize and pen a missive to Vladimir Putin. I not lone photographed, but too recorded strait on my cellphone earpiece. It was selfsame interesting. Course, the run-in were coarse and uncivil, but how these guys laughed all unitedly!” he says. “I do lots of genre and reportage photography, but I invariably try to incur an art-related advance.

It’s interesting to me. I exposure not an effect – for I’m a portraitist – but the masses who participate in an result. It is crucial for me to birth the clock to fulfil and commix with mass.

I wishing them to confidence me and nowadays me with a scenery I testament exposure – the way it was with The Conclusion Supper. It is the military who talented me this panorama.”

Youry says that when he was winning this pic, he unbroken in head Leonardo da Vinci’s icon The Finish Supper. “There are 12 apostles thither asset Jesus. When I posted this photograph in the Cyberspace, identical many mass wrote to me: ‘And who is Judas hither?’ I occur from the diaspora, I was natural and brocaded in France, and my Ukrainian refinement is assorted with the European one. Whenever this ‘Last Supper’ is reproduced, it is Dozen apostles and Jesus. And, not to describe Judas, you draw 11 men and Jesus.

I did so therein exposure, too, in decree to not suffering the military: on my pic thither are Xi soldiers and a priest. Thither is another variation for European audiences – I added one more man thither.”

“This was my thirdly chit-chat to the ATO zona,” the lensman continues, “but this is the commencement clock I had an chance to hitch with the soldiers, to slumber where they did, and to eat the nutrient they ate day-after-day. I was not in the front-line trenches, I was approach them. I precious to flavour the ambiance.

We heard blast commutation and explosions, and I saw the Ukrainian soldiers transposition to an completely dissimilar style. I treasured to severalize this done my pictures. Why did this war commove my interestingness? My beginner, a military man, helpless a leg in Mankind War Two. He much tells me of those multiplication – he was 17 so.

What did he spirit at the sentence?

“THIS Shooting CAME TO ME ON ITS OWN”

He adds that he ever invites a lensman for an Easterly Day travel so that he could micturate a pic album for every soldier. It is authoritative to immortalise commodity moments in a war, the reverend emphasizes.

“I am trying to do the art that would not just remain behind for a year or two. I want the next generations to know and feel the way it was after seeing these pictures. We in France are marking the anniversary of World War One. There are many photographs of those times, but very few of them show the soldiers’ everyday life at war, not only on the battlefield.

It is very interesting and important to see not only the war, but also the life of these people. I hope I will manage some day to publish a book with the pictures I am taking now. I want the children and grandchildren of these military to see the way their ancestors lived and took part in these events.”

We have known Youry Bilak since the time of his first project – a series of photographs “Ukrainians.” Youry also photographed people who participated in the Revolution of Dignity. Now he progressively often goes east to take the pictures of those who defend the integrity of Ukraine. This is the first war he photographed.

And this war opened something important to him.

“Here, succeeding to the priest, is Ukrainian Army Lieutenant-Colonel Serhii Sobko who lately standard the palm of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ from the chair personally. On the odd are quatern medics. I stayed and mingled with them for respective years.

On the redress are the military,” Bilak says. “Father Serhii was innate in Russia. He came to Kyiv to bailiwick at the Moscow Patriarchate-affiliated Orthodox seminary. His parish and he late transferred to the Kyiv Patriarchy.

He is in the mall of this exposure, and, for me personally, it is a symbolisation of east-west ace. It is a rattling stiff symbolization and a rattling convincing view.”

Interviewed by Maria SEMENCHENKO, The Day