William Mokrynski is a Canadian photo-based artist living in London.
The moment I heard the news of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine on the morning of Feb. 24, 2022, I instinctively felt that the world had changed. This was different from 2014: not an opportunistic snatching of Ukrainian territory, but Vladimir Putin’s full-on attempt to turn back the clocks and begin to rectify what he has repeatedly lamented as the greatest catastrophe of the past century: the loss of the Soviet empire, which included Ukraine.
Like many in Canada, I grew up connected with the culture and traditions handed down by family. My grandparents arrived from Ukraine to begin a new life around 1930. I suspect that other Canadians of Ukrainian descent would agree that Russia’s invasion, along with its revisionist rhetoric – straight out of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth – was not only an attack on the land and people of Ukraine, but also an assault on a fragment of who we are.
I found the imagery that emerged in the days and weeks after Russia’s invasion difficult to digest. Scenes of missiles striking apartment buildings that could have been in any city of the world; the skeletal remains of destroyed shopping malls; bodies of those who didn’t manage to evacuate in time laying next to their roller suitcases; and blocks and blocks of houses reduced to rubble.
In the midst of this carnage was the ruthless destruction of Mariupol, a city with a prewar population of 425,000. I recall footage taken from the turret of a Russian tank that casually travelled along a residential street, shelling every house it passed. Then there was the theatre used as a shelter, with the word “Children” clearly marked on the ground in Russian so it could be seen from the air; it was destroyed by a bomb dropped from a plane. An extra-brutal punishment seemed to be directed at this Russian-speaking community that refused to welcome the Russian “liberators” with roses. As the foreign press fled, news from this city ended, and a steely silence descended with the full grip of occupation.
It was in the middle of March, 2022, that I began encountering the photographs in my social-media feed. At first glance, they seemed to be simple snapshots of ordinary people that any friend could have shared of family life. The auto-translated captions, however, revealed that these were calls for help by friends and family desperately searching for loved ones who had disappeared, primarily from the Mariupol region. Notices for missing people are not a new phenomenon. However, seeing them appear on my screen in real time from an active war zone, intermixed with the prosaic contents of my daily feed, was unsettling. My initial response was to screen-capture the photographs of these individuals as they appeared on my phone to prevent them from disappearing into the ocean of data oblivion.
I decided that these digital images needed to be made physical, taking up space in the real world and not easily deleted. Through an exposure of the photo on my phone screen in a darkroom, the image has been frozen within silver grains of photographic paper. Processing chemistry was hand-applied and allowed to leave its marks, both developing the print and introducing a sense of intrusion, violation and loss.
Included in my screen captures were fragments of the captions. After reading several of these together, I realized these texts provided a different dimension to the war from what we saw in the news: a firsthand glimpse of what was experienced in Mariupol.
It’s important for me to emphasize that this work is not a piece of journalism but my personal response as an artist. I do not know what happened to these individuals. They may have been located quickly or may still be missing. Sadly, we know very little about what is happening in this part of Ukraine.
The title, Styrannya, means erasure in Ukrainian. This work is my attempt to ensure that these events and the people affected by this war are not forgotten.
