Witness: War in Ukraine
© Father Guennadi Rokhmaniyko
Moments of Decision
In 2016, VASA will be presenting a number of exhibitions and film/video screenings of work related to the concept of witness. Too often documentary work is presented as neutral and objective, with the camera as a recording device functioning as a witness. VASA offers another perspective: the image-maker is the first witness making intentional decisions, while the second witness is you the viewer--the reader of the visual text. Neither are objective.
As the image-maker records an image(s) she is drawing from a set of intentions, a paradigm of cultural, political, and historical understandings. In the case of a photojournalist, (or someone being paid for their service) intentions are heavily defined by the interest and needs of their editor/publisher.
The viewer, or reader, of the text (and by text I am referring to the post-modernist notion that anything produced may be read as a text encoded with meaning and intention) has exchanges with the image(s)--in a sense, reading, decoding, and constructing meaning in concert with the image. The reader is not neutral or objective in the process. Rather, she decodes the images through her historical understandings, experiences, cultural and historical reference points, and ideological framework. Making and reading texts (image or otherwise) is a constructive process, defining the experience and its significance.
Consider the moment the photographer decides to press the button and record a point in time. It is the quintessential “aha” moment when the maker recognizes something – thinking/ knowing that is it. It is not the decisive moment but actually a point of decision. (I first confronted the idea of the “moment of decision” from Nathan Lyons at the Visual Studies workshop, USA)
At work here is the interplay between historically and culturally defined intentions within an intuitive moment by both the author and reader of the text. In all cases, the concept of neutrality and objectivity are false notions of the real.
This may be all too obvious when considering the “professional” or “trained” image-maker. Does this also apply to what is referred to as the “amateur” or uninformed snap-shooter? At what point does the tourist or the family photographer go “click”? I would suggest that they, the professional and the amateur, work under the same influences but with different intentions. They both share a visual culture as reference points to what an image looks like and how it may function at various levels. The casual “shooter” may intend to record a moment, to construct a personal history, or capture what is deemed beautiful within an infinite number of photographs, or hours of film and video that were viewed once and then assigned to the shoebox in the closet, only to be seen on wintery nights or moments of quiet reflection.
The current VASA exhibition of images by Father Guennadi Rokhmaniyko invites us to consider those moments of decision. Guennadi Rokhmaniyko is a Ukrainian priest assigned to the war zone in eastern Ukraine. He was embedded with the Ukrainian army. He is not a trained photojournalist, or an art photographer looking to exhibit on the walls of a gallery or to publish a book. By any definition he is not a professional or trained photographer. He used a smart phone camera, recording what he saw around him, selected the images he wanted to send the curators at VASA, and the curators selected from that collection. His decisions were based on recording what he saw and either consciously or intutively made his decisions and selections. He wanted to say something through his photographs. We cannot forget that religions reproduce their belief through the symbolic as concept.
His work, as do all images, exist on various levels of meaning and engagement. Putting to one side that he is a priest and educated as an architect, the images standing on their own are emblematic in their depiction of the war zone in eastern Ukraine and war zones in general. The strength of his work comes from the collective experience of the viewer. Seen individually, the images are recordings of weapons, destroyed buildings, images on walls, bullet holes and a torn flag. Together, the collective reading of the work goes beyond the object, the individual image, to an intuitive sense of knowing. We feel it. (Image left Self-Portrait. : © Father Guennadi Rokhmaniyko)
We need to keep in mind, that what we see and understand through this exhibition and other displays of war, is why there are refugees.
© Roberto Muffoletto 2016