5K FROM THE FRONTLINE
ALISA SOPOVAANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND
photos by Stephen Petegorsky
exhibition materials courtesy of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
exhibition materials courtesy of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
#5kfromthefrontline
A photography and essay project about everyday life in the war-torn region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
A photography and essay project about everyday life in the war-torn region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
Produced by writer Alisa Sopova and photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind, #5Kfromthefrontline focuses on the daily details of living through military violence.
Media coverage of war relies on tropes of war reporting and photography. The discourse is dominated by images of tanks, soldiers, explosions, crying women, and pitiable refugees, in an effort to make conflict immediately recognizable to its audiences. This practice produces a distorted picture of war that overlooks most of the actual, non-sensational, day-to-day experiences of people living through it.
Alisa, a native of Donbas, and Anastasia, who has been extensively reporting on Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity, launched this project together in 2018. At the time, the war in Ukraine was routinely branded as “forgotten,” largely absent from international discourse. Despite this, the authors traveled to Donbas regularly and spent extended periods in towns like Avdiivka, Marinka, Krasnohorivka, Kurakhove, and Toretsk. Working with people who lived in the immediate vicinity of the frontline, sometimes only a few hundred meters away from military positions (hence the title of the project), the pair strove to tell the story of what it means not only to survive but to live meaningful lives in a place where war and peace are intertwined.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Alisa and Anastasia have continued to work on the project. As many of the towns and villages previously featured in #5kfromthefrontline become inaccessible for reporting or even occupied, the authors follow the stories of people from these places who have become refugees.
Exhibited at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, August 5-November 8, 2024.
Scott provided exhibition design and helped facilitate the loan of this exhibit from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, where the piece was previously shown as part of Shifting Ground (2023).
Associate Director, ACRC
Erica Drennan