After spending over two months months on Kyiv’s
Maidan earlier this year, Sherbakov is sharing his impressions through images
taken during some of the most turbulent days of Ukraine’s modern-day history.
He recently showed several Maidan photographs at Moscow’s famed Andrei
Sakharov Museum and Public Center and this week wrapped up an exhibit of his Maidan portraits
at the Ashkenaz Fesival at Toronto’s Harbourfront
Centre.
“I will fight propaganda with anti-propaganda,”
says Sherbakov of Russia’s incessant attempts to defame and destabilize Ukraine.
“Anti-propaganda is stronger than a Kalashnikov.”
The Maidan initially beckoned Sherbakov because
the square that was the heart of Ukraine’s revolution was the playground of his
youth.
“I grew up on the Maidan, I was there daily, all
my friends were on the Maidan,” he says.
As an Israeli born in Ukraine, however, he also
wanted to hear for himself if the accusations spread by Russian media of
fascism and anti-Semitism on the part of protesters were true. He had
never encountered anti-Semitism in his native Kyiv, even from the skinheads
with whom he had once traded jibes, he says. He knew however of the more
shameful chapters in Ukraine’s history. Could the Russian allegations be true?
Travelling from his home in Tel Aviv, Sherbakov
found the situation in Kyiv radically different from what Russian media
reported.
“I began to look for anti-Semites and fascists
by myself,” he says. “I didn’t find them.”
To get a better sense of who were the
protesters, Sherbakov in January 2014 started a project called “Eyes of
Maidan.” The concept, conceived with a friend, was to create a diptych of
two portraits of protesters, a close-up of their eyes and the person in full
length.
For background, Sherbakov asked individuals five
questions: name, age, region of residence, job, and did they have any children.
He wanted to know what was at stake for the protesters. It is easy to
take to the streets if you have nothing to lose, but much harder if the risks
are personally high. Sherbakov admits this was also a way of
investigating whether anti-Semitism was present on the Maidan. He wanted to see
the reaction in people’s eyes when he revealed he was from Israel.
Sherbakov photographed some one hundred
portraits of protesters. Although some people declined to have their
photo taken, “I didn’t see hatred or other bad signs”
in the protesters’ eyes, he says.
The “Eyes of Maidan” project ended abruptly on
February 18, 2014 when government snipers began to massacre protesters.
Over the next several days, Sherbakov documented the results of a
government at war with its people.
Perhaps his most famous photo is of Olesya
Zhukovska, a 21-year-old volunteer medic who was shot in the neck by a
government sniper on February 20, 2014, and who later Tweeted she was dying.
Sherbakov was standing next to Zhukovska when she was shot. His
photograph of the young woman pressing her bloodied neck as she is led from
Maidan was picked up by wire agencies and quickly went viral.
Tragically, two days before the Zhukovska
shooting, the friend who helped conceive the “Eyes of Maidan” project himself
lost his eye during the fighting on the Maidan. Also, the Maidan
protester Sherbakov documented as “Grandfather” in his portraits died recently
in battle in Ukraine’s east.
Sherbakov says he left Ukraine for Israel at the
age of seventeen
not because he felt oppressed. He wanted to continue
his education and become a doctor. Eventually he served in the Israel
Defense Force, working as a medic. After
fighting in the Second Intifada, Sherbakov
continued reserve duty as a medic. At the same time he followed his passion to
study art and photography, which is his current profession.
Despite his criticism of Russians who believe
anti-Ukrainian propaganda, Sherbakov bears no enmity towards the Russian
people. He
says one of the reasons he travelled to Canada with the exhibit was to
challenge Russian propaganda there about the conflict in Ukraine. That
means being open about who he is.
“I feel myself as a Ukrainian, a Jew, a Russian…I
think in Russian, this was my language at home…I will never be 100 percent
Israeli, or something else. I’ll always be who I was when formed to the
age of eighteen…It’s important that I am three mentalities. Ukrainians,
Jews, and Russians, it’s important these three nations live in peace.”
Even as fighting rages in Ukraine’s east, people
must remember that not all Russians support their government’s policies. Their
situation is precarious, Sherbakov says. He was, for instance, able to
exhibit his photographs at Moscow’s Sakharov Center with the help of friends
there.
Although he returned to Israel after the height
of the Maidan protests, “I feel myself closer to Ukraine than I ever did
before,” Sherbakov says. The Maidan “gave birth
to a new Ukrainian nation.”
He acknowledges he played a role in that birth.
“I was a photographer who participated in a
revolution on the side of a nation and my weapon was a camera,” Sherbakov says.
Photographs of Olesya Zhukovska,
“Grandfather” and the portraits of protesters can be viewed on Sherbakov’s
website at 1shot1.com.
Natalia A. Feduschak, a
former Kyiv Post staff writer, is director of communications at the Ukrainian
Jewish Encounter.
