A postcard from Anastasia Taylor-Lind in Ukraine.

   Originally, Anastasia Taylor-Lind travelled to the Ukraine in 2014 as part of an ongoing project called "Negative Zero", documenting the effects of population decline in Europe. Her arrival in the Ukraine coincided with the "Euromaidan Revolution" which started in February of that year and resulted in the ousting of the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Anastasia started to cover the revolution, producing a series of portraits which became the widely acclaimed book "Maidan: Portraits from the Black Square" published by GOST. 

Anastasia has now relocated to the Ukraine and is working on a new project about the war there. As part of this she recently posted on her social media accounts that she would be sending postcards as part of the project, inviting her followers to sign up to recieve one. So far she has already sent out hundreds of them around the world. One of them came to me as I had signed up to be a part of this.  

This is the postcard I recieved from Anastasia Taylor-Lind.

This is the message she wrote on the back.

This is the Imageblend I created after grabbing a shot of a gorgeous sunset in Leominster last night.

This was Anastasia's response to my Instagram post.

 As she said, unexpected and poignant. For me it's kind of poignant that the amount of people who have lost their lives in the conflict equate to the amount of people who have visited my blog from the Ukraine in the past few years. That would be 20% of my audience...gone!

I will be posting more about this in the next couple of months here on my blog.  

160 Years Of War Photography. The Great Grandad of War Photography and the Crimean War.

 

As the Ukraine erupts into violent protest over it's preference for the EU or the Russian state, western viewer's are shocked and appalled at the level's of bloodshed and loss of life. Yesterday Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych says he has agreed a truce with opposition leaders, after at least 26 people died in clashes this week. In a statement, he said "negotiations" would now start to end the bloodshed of the last two days. Opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk confirmed this, saying there would be no new police attempts to storm the main protest site, the Maidan, in Kiev.
   Some of the worlds best photojournalists are there covering the protest with their digital cameras and their camera phones. We are streaming images live over the internet 24 hours a day.
    Bearing this in mind, the "art" of photojournalism and war photography came to life 160 years ago in the Ukraine and Romania during the Crimean War (1853-1856) which was a war between the Russian Empire against  Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire, Back then the Ottoman empire was what we now call Turkey and most of the Balkan country's and the Arabic region. To get some perspective of this war a total of 300,000-375,000 people on the pro-Ottoman side and 143,000 people on the Russian side died in three years of war, these vast number's were due in part to a massive cholera epidemic. Since 2003 only about 300,000 have died in Iraq in total!!
    The Crimean war was the first to be reported in international media as it happened. The journalist William Russell reporting for "The Times of London" sent dispatches from the Ukraine and the battle known as "The Charge of The Light Brigade" in 1855 using underwater telegraph cable's laid by the British. Messages taking about 3 hours to reach London.

Romanian War Photographer Carol Szathmari in a self portrait circa 1850.

A Russian Army Camp

The Oltenita Cholera Quarantine Camp 1854

Turkish cavalry.

Turkish Artillery.

Turkish Army Musicians.

Turkish Soldiers

   Carol Szathmari is considered to be the great granddad of photojournalism and war photography having been first on the scene with his plate camera's beating Roger Fenton by a year.
   Szathmari was born 11th January 1812 in what is now called Cluj, a district of Romania, back then it was called Transylvania, (maybe he was a blood relation to Dracula ;) !!!!) he studied as a painter earning the respect of the Romanian royal family and became a passionate traveller, he often crossed the Carpathin mountain's to visit Bucharest where he began to live in 1843. A few year's later in 1848 he began to experiment with photography.
   He started taking pictures in the first year of the war which began in October. He photographed landscape, fortifications, battlefields, and took portraits. he managed to take pictures of soldiers from both opposing sides of the conflict and their commanding officers. In April 1854 his horsedrawn photographic wagon was attacked by a Turkish artillery position thinking he was a Russian spy, luckily he was unhurt.
   In 1855 his prints were exhibited at the Paris World Exposition. He eventually offered his work to Queen Victoria, to Emperors Napoleon III and Franz Josef I and to the other royalty of Europe. He was the first certified photographer in Romania, being also one of the first 10 photographers in Europe. Carol Szathmary became the official photographer of the Romanian rulers. He had long been attracted by folk types and produced a large series of pictures with peasants, gypsies, merchants and artisans. He toured the fairs and the crowded streets of Bucharest in search of photographs. He also documented the Russian-Ottoman war of 1877-1878. He died at the age of 75 in 1887.

Kuchma Stamps Out Press Freedom In Ukraine

This story from the Ukraine reads like something from a James Bond story. On 16th September 2000 Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze failed to return home to his wife and two children (who have spent the last 12 years living in the United States as political refugees.) Two months later, on 3 November 2000, a body was found in a forest in the Taraschanskyi Raion (district) of the Kiev Oblast (province), some 70 km (43 mi) outside Kiev. The corpse had been decapitated and doused in dioxine, apparently to make identification more difficult; forensic investigations found that the dioxine bath and decapitation had occurred while the victim was still alive.

Georgy Gongadze is seen here in an undated family photo

   Born in Georgia in 1969, Georgiy Ruslanovich Gongadze became a successful journalist, first in Georgia (where he reported on the conflict in Abkhazia) and then in Ukraine. His strongly independent line soon attracted hostility from the increasingly authoritarian government of Leonid Kuchma; during the October 1999 presidential election, his commentaries prompted a call from Kuchma's headquarters to say "that he had been blacklisted to be dealt with after the election."
   In April 2000, Gongadze co-founded a news website, Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), as a means of sidestepping the government's increasing influence over the mainstream media. He observed that following the muzzling of a prominent pro-opposition newspaper after the election, "today there is practically no objective information available about Ukraine". The website specialized in political news and commentary, focusing particularly on President Kuchma, the country's wealthy "oligarchs" and the official media.
    In June 2000, Gongadze wrote an open letter to Ukraine's chief prosecutor about harassment from the SBU, the Ukrainian secret police, directed towards himself and his Ukrayinska Pravda colleagues and apparently related to an investigation into a murder case in the southern port of Odessa. He complained that had been forced into hiding because of harassment from the secret police, that he said he and his family were being followed, that his staff were being harassed, and that the SBU were spreading a rumor that he was wanted on a murder charge.
   While serving as head of the Ukrainian interior ministry's external surveillance service, Olexiy Pukach tracked Gongadze, the court found. Pukach testified that he had accidentally strangled the journalist with a belt while interrogating him about possible links to foreign states in September 2000.
   He further admitted severing Gongadze's head from his body, which was found in woodland in the Kiev area later that year. Part of the skull was found in 2009.
    On 14 September 2010, Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General issued a statement stating that prosecutors had concluded that former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko had ordered Pukach to carry out the murder. Kraychenko committed suicide in 2005.
   First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin claimed 20 February 2013 that his office had collected enough evidence confirming former President Leonid Kuchma's(1994-2005) responsibility for ordering Gongadze's assassination. Kuchma's replay the next day was: "This is another banal example of a provocation, which I've heard more than enough in the past 12 years"
    Under former President Leonid Kuchma opposition papers were closed and several journalists died in mysterious circumstances. Between 1995 and 2004 11 journalists were found hung or died in mysterious circumstances.