Opting for truthful reflection of reality: from Soviet documentary press photography to war images

This essay seeks to look at the development of Ukrainian documentary photography throughout the second half of the 20th century till nowadays as an emancipatory movement and a deliberate search for reliability in photography. This task is being undertaken by resorting to the photographic practice of Iryna Pap, Viktor Marushchenko and Kostiantyn Polishchuk. The first one is an acclaimed Soviet photoreporter, who launched the School of Journalistic Excellence at the Journalists Union of Ukraine (est. the 1970s), where Viktor Marushchenko started his path in photojournalism. Whereas, Kostiantyn Polishchuk, an anthropologist with his background in political journalism, studied photography at Viktor Marushchenko School of Photography (est. in 2004). This trajectory starts from declaratively trustful Soviet documentary photography, stretches to the Ukrainian Independence’ humanitarian photography, and culminates in the authorial expression in documentation of the ongoing war. In my provisional alignment of the trajectory from Soviet documentary press photography to war images, stated in the title, I draw on André Rouillé’s schema for development of photography outlined in A Photography. Between Document and Contemporary Art. According to him in the second half of the twentieth century the direction photography takes is from document to expression, from humanist to humanitarian photography and eventually art photography. I take this as a working hypothesis and seek to apply it to Soviet and Ukrainian photography which have been theorized scarcely and still lack a methodological foundation.