Under tree cover, a man takes shelter behind a small black curtain, like a photographer straight out of the 19th century, to take portraits of Ukrainian soldiers. This is not his first conflict: he has already fought in the Korean War.
A certain feverishness surrounds the preparation of the photo. At the manoeuvre, the Ukrainian Arseniï Guérassimenko, a professional photographer, flutters around a Graflex, an imposing machine placed on a foot. He inserts a book-sized film into the big box. Go back and forth to make adjustments.
In front of him, two soldiers, one of whom wears fatigues and the other a bulletproof vest and an assault rifle, wait in front of a powerful Soviet “Pion” tank. Then the photographer rushes behind the black cloth, presses the button, and they break the pose.
The scene, observed by AFP during a first meeting with the photographer as Ukrainian troops gained ground against Russian forces in the battle for Kherson (south), had a flavor of the past, in a sadly modern conflict .
AFP then met Arseniy Gerasimenko again in kyiv in April, while he was developing his pictures in a lab dimly lit by red light.
This photographer was not intended to cover conflicts. A fan of landscape and fashion photos, he found himself faced with a fait accompli when Russia invaded his country on February 24, 2022.
“I wanted to make myself useful”, “do something at my level”, explains this big guy of 35 years, with a sweet smile. “I can’t shoot a pistol or a submachine gun, but I can take pictures. That’s my contribution.”
Half a dozen times already, he went to the front. In particular near Bakhmout, in the East, “the most frightening place” where he “ever went”, because of the “heavy bombardments”, he says.
Always at his side, his Graflex Speed ??Graphic, a small piece of history all by itself. 70 years old, it had been acquired by an American photographer who went to cover the Korean War (1950-1953), told him the man from whom he bought it online.
And now, “it’s quite symbolic”, he remarks, the old machine is illustrated in a new conflict, in Ukraine this time, where it captures, according to him, “History” in progress, ” moments of truth”.
The Graflex, “which may seem big, impractical and extremely heavy to us”, were once “constantly used by reporters”, recalls this Ukrainian.
“Marilyn Monroe, Al Capone, all those stories we’ve seen in movies…but also the (American) flag planted on (the Japanese island) of Iwo Jima – bloody WWII battle -, c is the Graflex”, he boasts.
“During the Korean War, it was already completely outdated” compared to the small film cameras used by photographers such as Robert Capa or Henri Cartier-Bresson, however observes Florian Ebner, curator at the Center Pompidou, an important Parisian museum dedicated to the contemporary art.
Because the Graflex requires changing film with each take, making long adjustments, which prevents “strapping”, being in the “action”, he continues.
But this “ceremonial” in itself, which goes through a “collaborative process with the person photographed”, who is asked to be “static” and to “pose”, gives an “aesthetic cachet that we does not obtain with another material”, estimates for his part Bruno Serralongue, who uses the same kind of device.
“The quality of the blur, which remains very clear”, in the background is also “very different” from the rendering of a digital or film camera, adds this French photographer, who has spent years immortalizing in Calais (north of France). France) of migrants trying to reach the United Kingdom.
One of the shots of which Arseniï Guérassimenko is the most proud, successful after a dozen attempts because the Graflex had to be activated just when firing, represents a soldier, named Micha, standing on a tank, barely lit by an enormous sheaf of flames.
“People tell me that this image gives them hope,” says Arseniï Guérassimenko, who mentions “the friendships that are created” between his subjects and him, thanks to Graflex.
Micha was less fortunate. He died in action in March.
But “thanks to this photo, he hopes, his memory will remain forever, as a symbol of his courage”.
04/05/2023 12:49:05 – Ukrainka (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
