Welcome to a conversation about how war and conflict are portrayed and communicated in the media. The conversation is between photographers Paul Hansen and Yana Kononova. Yana Kononova, based in Kyiv, is one of the photographers in the exhibition Under Attack by Ukrainian Warchive, which is on display at Ulricehamn City Hall between October 28 and November 19.

Ukrainian Warchive arose as a response to the challenges faced by Ukrainian society since the full-scale Russian military invasion in 2022. The project collects and preserves digital evidence of the war in the form of documentary photography, accompanied by contextualizing video narratives. Its primary goal is to protect the photographic heritage and to document the war on a digital platform.

The conversation is organized in connection with the exhibition Under Attack with Ukranian Warchive, which is on display at Ulricehamn City Hall between October 28 and November 19 and is part of GIBCA Extended.

The conversation is a collaboration between the Hasselblad Foundation, Ukrainian Warchive, and the Center for Photography, with support from Ulricehamns Sparbank / Sparbanksfonden Ulrica.

Participants

Paul Hansen is a photographer and works for Dagens Nyheter. Hansen is known for his images from various conflict areas and has received several awards. He has been named Photographer of the Year on nine occasions, has been nominated for the Stora Journalistpriset, and is the only Swede to have won World Press Photo’s first prize.

Yana Kononova is an artist with an academic background in social sciences and holds a doctorate in sociology. She was born on the island of Pirallahi in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan. During the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, her family emigrated to Ukraine. In 2019, Kononova won the Bird in Flight Prize in emerging Photography, and in 2022 she was awarded the Hariban Award. Her work has been shown in Ukraine and abroad.

Emine Ziyatdinova is the exhibition’s curator and co-founder of Ukrainian Warchive.