An exhibition on the war in eastern Ukraine opened in New York

JT Blatti, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, visited the east of Ukraine. The photographer captured the soldiers defending their homeland in an undeclared war with Russia. Amazed that the fighters cannot return to normal life and are deprived of state support, she decided to tell the world about them. This is stated in a press release. The Ukrainian Institute of America.

About the exhibition

Frontline / Peace Life is an exhibition of portraits created by photojournalist, writer and US war veteran JT Blatty. She transmits a chronology of events in eastern Ukraine, where military operations supported by Russia continue for the sixth consecutive year.

Opening of the exhibition Held on Thursday, January 16th she works from 18:00 to 20:00.

Blatty came to Ukraine two years ago to document the generation of Ukrainian volunteer soldiers involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since 2014. These are young men and women who, of their own free will, without obligations to the government, and many without military training, are sent into the war zone. Their main motive is to confront the Russian-backed insurgents in order to protect their homeland.

Blatti's photos are not sensational. Pictures reveal the inner life of the characters, giving them the freedom to look natural. Unlike other portrait painters, Blatti does not seek to catch the moment when the characters prefer to hide. Warriors look at the camera in contact with the viewer, and the frame itself is free from distractions. Blatti was inspired to create a photo exhibition by soldiers who fought in a reality far from her own. She fought under the contract and was, in her words, “a pawn on a broader agenda that we may never understand,” says the official website the photographer.

Volunteers fighting in Donbass, she said, were not pawns. “Now their story needs to be told like never before, because their story is far from over,” she said.

Aftermath

Since 2014, more than 4 Ukrainian soldiers have died in an undeclared war in eastern Ukraine. More than 500 warriors returned home to the so-called "peaceful life." But these figures apply only to soldiers who have been officially registered (documented) in the Armed Forces of Ukraine or in volunteer battalions.

Blatti was struck by the fact that these people simply can not return to normal. “When I was sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, we fought on another land and could avoid the proximity of hostilities after our rotation, in a place where we could cope with the physical and mental injuries caused by our experience. But the soldiers and veterans of Ukraine are faced with the inevitable reality, waging war on their own land. " According to her, this makes the transition to a normal life for them almost impossible. Uncertainty complicates the situation, because it is unclear when the next enemy invasion will occur, as well as the lack of hope that the war will end.

On the subject: ATO is no more: the format of war has changed in the Donbass

Today, those who survived are forced to struggle with the bureaucratic red tape in the courtrooms in order to try to achieve the status of "combatant." This label will give them access to poorly funded state support to overcome the psychological and physical suffering they received in the war.

Many of them continue to serve at the front. They are not able to find their place in "peaceful life" and abandon the goal for which they went to war and for the sake of which their comrades died.

About the photographer

Former US Army Captain JT (Jenn) Blatti graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point. She is a war veteran of 2002-2003. in Afghanistan and Iraq, author of Fish Town: Fish Town: Down the Road to Louisiana's Fishing Communities, a photojournalist and spare parts photographer for FEMA, whose articles and photographs have been published in magazines such as Bloomberg, National Geographic, PDN Magazine, Smithsonian. Te Daily Beast / Newsweek, Te Oxford American, CNN and others.

Since the beginning of 2018, Blatti spent many months in eastern Ukraine. Her project “Front. Peaceful Life: Ukrainian Revolutionaries of the Forgotten War ”in May 2019 was exhibited at the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago.

Organized with the support of The Ukrainian Institute of America (UIA) under the leadership of Walter Hoydysh, the director of arts at the institution, this is Blatti's first exhibition to be held with the assistance of this institution.

Address of Exhibitions: Ukrainian Institute of America 2 East 79th Street New York, NY 10075. For more information, call: (212) 288-8660 or visit www.ukrainianinstitute.org.

The exhibition will last until 8 March 2020.