Text for Exhibition of Phographs of the War in the Ukraine
A group of Portuguese photographers asked me to write a brief text to accompany their exhibition in Lisbon. Here it is…
Every Day of Our Lives
Richard Zimler
We live in a world where some very sick and evil people deny that the Nazis ever used Auschwitz, Treblinka and other extermination camps to murder six million Jews and half a million Roma (Gypsies) during World War II. Imagine how much easier it would be for them to spread their hateful lies and conspiracy theories if there were no photographs or films of the starved and brutalized prisoners of the camps being liberated by Allied armies?
The development of photography in the nineteenth century has made it possible to document the nearly limitless suffering caused by wars and conflicts all over the world – and to put the lie to those who would find it very convenient to whitewash or forget horrific crimes against humanity. Who can ever forget, for example, the incomparably disturbing image of a wailing Vietnamese child – Phan Thị Kim Phúc – running naked down a road after being burned in a napalm attack in 1972? Many people – myself included – regard that one picture, taken by Vietnamese-American photographer Nick Ut, as instrumental in finally ending an immoral war that took the lives of one million Vietnamese people and 58,000 American troops.
Every day, courageous photographers risk their lives to document the suffering caused by armed conflict and senseless violence – and to remind us of the desperate need to establish peace. They do so in the jungles of Myanmar, the Occupied Territories, the illegal logging settlements in the Amazon rainforest and many other places where common sense would tell them not to go. Thankfully, over the last two months, they have also been providing us with a steady stream of disturbing and often heartrending images from Mariupol, Bucha and other cities and towns across the Ukraine.
All this rubble was once a village….
This husband and wife saying goodbye may never see each other again…
The men, women and children buried in these graves deserved more than crosses and flowers…
This abandoned book of grammar must have belonged to a child who is now dead – or living in a far-off country.
These are just a few of the unforgettable messages we can infer from the photographs in this exhibition of work by the following Portuguese professionals: Adriano Miranda, André Alves, Daniel Rodrigues, Eduardo Leal, João Porfírio, Miguel A. Lopes, Miguel Manso, Nuno Veiga, Paulo Nunes Santos, Rui Caria, Rui Duarte Silva e Tiago Miranda.
These talented photographers have given their exhibition the title Diakuyu or Дякую, meaning Thank you in the Ukrainian language. They chose this title, they tell us, “To pay homage to the Ukrainian people and thank them for fighting not just for themselves but also for the universal principles of freedom, justice and democracy.”
Coincidentally, I find myself writing this text on the 25th of April, the anniversary of the Portuguese revolution of 1974, which brought democracy to the country after nearly five decades of a repressive, right-wing dictatorship. And yet this exhibition is a reminder that we must all fight for peace, human dignity and basic human rights not just on the days we commemorate important social and political changes but every day of our lives.