Solomiya #5
210 x 260 mm, 146 pages (elastic bound)
Berlin, Germany and Kyiv, Ukraine (English-language)
Editorial board: Ivanna Kozachenko, Vsevolod Kazarin, Andrii Ushytskyi, Sebastian Wells, Dmytro Chepurnyi, Oleksandra Pogrebynak, Jonathon Turnbull and Karolina Uskakovych
Art direction and design: Anne-Lene Prodd, Petre Bünnagel, Kollektiv Scrollan (Berlin)
Founded in April 2022 by Kyiv-based photographer Vsevolod Kazarin and Berlin photographer Sebastian Wells, Soлomiya is a visceral printed response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Taking form as a folio, it documents the everyday life through the literal and figurative lenses of young independent Ukrainians battling with the existentialism of the continued war by their eastern neighbour.
The fifth issue changes to a slightly larger unbound page size, held together by the now customary elastic band, and focuses on the theme: ‘After now.’ Pulling together stories from Yemen, Georgia, Germany and Ukraine, it examines the reality of imagining a time after war, from within ongoing war, reflecting on ‘hope and freedom not as a triumph, but as a complex, often compromised condition, entangled in inequality, shaped by trauma, and co-opted by power.’
Originally launched as a one-off exercise in recording the continuation of everyday life in the face of the Russian invasion, Soлomiya has developed into a unique editorial project. Reflecting a country and its people in real time, and reaching beyond the standard language and modes of news reporting, it is a vital project documenting the effect and response to war.