On amazing humaneness

Youry Bilak, a French photographer of Ukrainian origin, visited the ATO zone on Easter Day. On coming home, he posted a photo on social networking sites, which exploded the Internet in a jiffy. Casting a glance at it, everyone immediately says: “It is the Last Supper.” This shows the great symbolism and power of this still.

Bilak went east together with the Rev. Serhii Dmytriiev (pictured in the middle in place of Christ). It is the priest who suggested the photographer to see the front-line Easter Day. “I am informally called chaplain of the 1st Battalion, 30th Detached Mechanized Brigade. This is my second Easter in this battalion. The first was in the Kherson region, and this one in Donetsk oblast. I’ve known many of these guys for more than a year, and they are very dear to me,” the Rev. Dmytriiev says. “Over there on the front, the boys became more serious and more conscious of their faith and relatives. They prayed for their families and killed comrades…”

The priest held four Easter services in the east and brought the military 1,200 Easter eggs which volunteers had been dyeing all night long, 600 Easter breads, mattresses, chocolates, coffee, etc. “It is important for me to stay in touch with those I met on the last Easter Day, and I will be supporting them as long as I can,” the priest says.

He adds that he always invites a photographer for an Easter Day journey so that he could make a photo album for every soldier. It is important to record good moments in a war, the clergyman emphasizes.

“THIS SHOT CAME TO ME ON ITS OWN”

“This photo was taken on Easter Day in Donetsk oblast a few kilometers from the front line. I spent a week there. We lived at a first-aid station. This gave us a chance to mingle with and meet the soldiers. In the middle of the picture is Father Serhii Dmytriiev. It is he who invited me to travel with him to the ATO zone,” Youry Bilak says to The Day. “On Easter Day, he held a service for the military, and when the soldiers stood by the table after the liturgy, I saw this scene. As a photographer, I like painting very much and whenever I am taking a photo, I try to find an analogy with painting. So, when I saw these military by the table with priest in the middle, this shot came to me on its own. I was not implementing an idea of mine – I just fixed a moment.”

Youry says that when he was taking this photo, he kept in mind Leonardo da Vinci’s picture The Last Supper. “There are 12 apostles there plus Jesus. When I posted this photo in the Internet, very many people wrote to me: ‘And who is Judas here?’ I come from the diaspora, I was born and raised in France, and my Ukrainian culture is mixed with the European one. Whenever this ‘Last Supper’ is reproduced, it is 12 apostles and Jesus. And, not to depict Judas, you depict 11 men and Jesus. I did so in this photo, too, in order to not hurt the military: on my photo there are 11 soldiers and a priest. There is another version for European audiences – I added one more serviceman there.”

“I and the soldiers are not laying claim to the role of Christ and apostles, respectively. For any Last Supper is an imitation. We had a Last Supper of our own. We have our own secrets, recollections, and prayers to God. And for our servicemen, the church, which we regard as just love, is always present on the front line. They pray in their own way, may belong to different Christian denominations, and, maybe, do not go to church every Sunday, but they all have love for people through love for God. Our army is distinguished by high morality and love for people. They are not punishers or killers,” the Rev. Dmytriiev says to The Day.

He adds that any supper is a special event. “One always chooses who to sit with at the table. It was a great honor for me to sit in the middle,” the Rev. Dmytriiev sums up.

“I PHOTOGRAPH NOT AN EVENT BUT THE PEOPLE WHO TAKE PART IN IT”

“Here, next to the priest, is Ukrainian Army Lieutenant-Colonel Serhii Sobko who recently received the decoration of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ from the president personally. On the left are four medics. I stayed and mingled with them for several days. On the right are the military,” Bilak says. “Father Serhii was born in Russia. He came to Kyiv to study at the Moscow Patriarchate-affiliated Orthodox seminary. His parish and he recently transferred to the Kyiv Patriarchate. He is in the center of this photograph, and, for me personally, it is a symbol of east-west unity. It is a very strong symbol and a very convincing scene.”

The photographer says that, in the case of this photo, he was only a witness who managed to catch a moment. “Usually, when I do art photography, I don’t use this camera with which I took this picture. It’s not so high quality. At that moment, the wide-frame photo camera I needed was in the car. I saw this scene and thought: should I run for that camera or take a shot with this one? There was such a calm atmosphere, everything was so natural. I was afraid that while I was running for the came, this atmosphere would vanish. So, I took a shot with this camera not to miss the moment,” Youry says laughing.

This is not Bilak’s only photograph with the Ukrainian military, which makes allusions to artworks. “In another building, I took a photo on the analogy of Ilya Repin’s picture Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. I asked the soldiers to sit down at the table and write a letter to Vladimir Putin. I not only photographed, but also recorded sound on my cell phone. It was very interesting. Naturally, the words were harsh and rude, but how these guys laughed all together!” he says. “I do a lot of genre and reporting photography, but I always try to find an art-related approach. It’s interesting to me. I photograph not an event – for I’m a portraitist – but the people who take part in an event. It is important for me to have the time to meet and mingle with people. I want them to trust me and present me with a scene I will photograph – the way it was with The Last Supper. It is the military who gifted me this scene.”

“I’M LOOKING FOR EYEWITNESSES TO HISTORY”

“This was my third visit to the ATO zone,” the photographer continues, “but this is the first time I had an opportunity to stay with the soldiers, to sleep where they did, and to eat the food they ate daily. I was not in the front-line trenches, I was near them. I wanted to feel the atmosphere. We heard fire exchange and explosions, and I saw the Ukrainian soldiers switch to an altogether different mode. I wanted to tell this through my pictures. Why did this war rouse my interest? My father, a military serviceman, lost a leg in World War Two. He often tells me of those times – he was 17 then. What did he feel at the time?

“I visited military hospitals in Kyiv and talked to the wounded. I saw a young legless soldier there – the same as my father once was. I felt as if I were in a time machine, as if I had found myself in two different time spans – the time my father was bedridden and the time this young Ukrainian is in hospital. This was a very stunning moment for me. All I am looking for when I go to the ATO zone is people who are eyewitnesses to history.”

“In France, almost nobody discusses the war in eastern Ukraine,” Bilak says. “We have our own problems, such as terrorism. When there’s no bloodshed, people forget everything quickly. But I would say the mentality of the French has changed. Earlier, there was a very strong impact of Russian propaganda, but now the situation is different. French journalists in Moscow have found people who are paid for writing propaganda in social networking sites. They interviewed a woman who said she had worked for the Kremlin for several months. Her job was to leave all kinds of propagandistic comments in social websites. But she was fed up with these lies in a few months, and she quit this ‘job.’ The French read this, and something changed in their perception of this conflict in eastern Ukraine. They have understood that there is such thing as propaganda and they came under its influence.

“I am trying to do the art that would not just remain behind for a year or two. I want the next generations to know and feel the way it was after seeing these pictures. We in France are marking the anniversary of World War One. There are many photographs of those times, but very few of them show the soldiers’ everyday life at war, not only on the battlefield. It is very interesting and important to see not only the war, but also the life of these people. I hope I will manage some day to publish a book with the pictures I am taking now. I want the children and grandchildren of these military to see the way their ancestors lived and took part in these events.”

We have known Youry Bilak since the time of his first project – a series of photographs “Ukrainians.” Youry also photographed people who participated in the Revolution of Dignity. Now he more and more often goes east to take the pictures of those who defend the integrity of Ukraine. This is the first war he photographed. And this war opened something important to him.

“My first trip to the ATO zone was rather fast and brief. I visited Artemivsk, Sloviansk, and Kramatorsk, I was on the highway that leads to Debaltseve,” Youry says. “I’d never photographed war or worked in an environment like this. I was struck with the atmosphere. The army was something abstract for me. But here I saw that the army means soldiers each of whom is a life, ideas, habits, dreams – it is a family. When I arrived, I began to mingle with the military. It was winter, it was frosty. We kindled a makeshift stove and sat around it to chat. We joked. It was a discovery to me. I saw and felt this amazing humaneness.”