Ukraine, from Maidan to war

“Revolutions are never written in advance. When they drag on, time plays against the event - little by little the heroes wear themselves out and deliver characters to increasingly uncertain fates. For years, Guillaume Herbaut has been going to Ukraine to follow the tensions between the partisans of a country turned towards Europe and those who are attracted by its Russian component.

This struggle, which begins with the heroic occupation of a place in Kiev, turns into a trench warfare in the east of the country: how to translate this installation of a people in what becomes in the eyes of all a cursed era? Perhaps by giving each rebellious being the figure of a fighter, and making him enter the current legend.

How not to remember that it is there, in this precise place of the world, in the middle of the XIX^e century, that photography first faced war? Crimean War (1853-1856): the Englishman Roger Fenton advances with his laboratory van pulled by six horses and in which he develops his collodion glass plates. They will be used to have the first press images in history engraved “from photography”.

Herbaut finds something archaic in the war in Donbass: taciturn figures, frozen landscapes, frozen atmosphere. Herbaut fraternizes with his photographic ancestors as the separatists and the Ukrainian army replay the ancient dispute between Europe and Asia. "

Michael Poivert

Curator: Céline Duval
Scenography: Étienne Andréys

“From Chernobyl to war. Ukraine is a marker in my photographic journey. Through this country, I went from classic black and white photojournalism, to documentary photography that chronicles the invisible drama of a nuclear disaster. In 2001, From the first moments I felt linked to this territory. The colors reminded me of my childhood. People accepted me in their daily life. I discovered the contaminated forbidden zone. A parallel world, a different relationship to reality, a questioning of the way of photographing the traces of History.

Since then I have been going to this country every year. 2004, the Orange revolution and the Donbass. Then, the return of the Cossacks, symbols of a Ukrainian identity. 2008, the crimea and its inter-communal tensions. Series of reportage, like a puzzle that prepared me to follow the Maidan revolution and the war. The history of this country has allowed me to explore different narratives, to break benchmarks to ultimately get back into the news and reflect on photojournalism today. Like the Chernobyl leopard stain contamination, Ukraine is currently divided into different zones: contaminated zones, zones of war, zones of peace as a mirror of the future of our societies. One reason that pushes me to continue. "

Guillaume Herbaut

Guillaume Herbaut, born in 1970, lives and works in Paris. Along with commissions for the press, his documentary work takes him to places steeped in history whose symbols and memory he questions in order to reveal their invisible dramas: Chernobyl, Auschwitz, Nagasaki and more recently the conflict in Ukraine. His photographs have been exhibited at the Jeu de Paume, at the Maison rouge and in many festivals. He has received several awards, including two World Press, a Visa d'or, the Niépce 2011 prize and, in 2016, the Bayeux-Calvados prize for war correspondents, web journalism category, for his roadmap in Ukraine produced by Arte Info. The same year, he published 7/7, the shadow of the living with the editions of La Martinière. In 2018, his work was exhibited at the Grande Arche du Photojournalisme in Paris under the title “Pour Mémoire”.