Wolfgang Schwan’s portrait of Olena Kurilo, which the American photojournalist posted on Instagram on Feb. 25, 2022, has become one of the most ubiquitous pictures from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Wolfgang Schwan’s portrait of Olena Kurilo, which the American photojournalist posted on Instagram on Feb. 25, has become one of the most ubiquitous pictures from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The picture shows the bandaged, bloodied face of Kurilo, a Ukrainian civilian and schoolteacher. I agree with Schwan’s assessment that terrible things ought to be recorded and looked at. But why weren’t satellite images of Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border as troubling as the face of Kurilo? Why is the imminence of violence easier to ignore than its aftermath?
Like Schwann’s camera, the photograph itself is also a little device that we place between ourselves and difficult realities. When we look at the photograph of troops on the border or the face of Kurilo, we feel a certain distance from these events that equalizes them. We may feel fear, anger and sadness, but we also get the sense that there’s nothing we can do, so we do nothing.interview with a Ukrainian woman, standing outside her shelled apartment building in a suburb of Kyiv.