This project weaves together photographic images with poetry, audio clips, and music. The photographer’s multidisciplinary presentation grounds the facts of war in her subjective experience, and simultaneously allows her to inject more emotion and symbolism than photographs might convey on their own.
2024 Photo Contest, World Press Photo Open Format Award

War Is Personal

Photographer

Julia Kochetova

This project weaves together photographic images with poetry, audio clips, and music. The photographer’s multidisciplinary presentation grounds the facts of war in her subjective experience, and simultaneously allows her to inject more emotion and symbolism than photographs might convey on their own.

After almost ten years of fighting and tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties, war continued raging in Ukraine in 2023. While daily news media updates its audience with statistics and maps and international attention drifts elsewhere, the daily experience of Ukrainians living through the war is hard to comprehend for people outside the country.

This web-based project brings together photojournalism with the documentary style of a personal diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality. By combining documentary imagery with poetry and music, the project provides not only an intimate glimpse into life under siege, but also a more profound look into how the war is being processed, and how despite tragedy, pain, and trauma, experiences can be shared across borders.

Layering images with text and music, this interdisciplinary approach serves to ground the stark realities of war in the photographer’s subjective experiences. As a whole, the project is a complex exploration of the emotional and psychological toll of conflict, expressing not only loss, pain, desperation, and resignation, but also hope and resilience. 

 

Additional credits:
Music: Daria Kolomiec
Illustrations: Oleksandr Komiakhov

Experience the interactive website.

Julia Kochetova
About the photographer

Julia Kochetova (b. 1993) is a Ukrainian photojournalist and documentary filmmaker based in Kyiv. Her work focuses on firsthand storytelling as a method, researching topics of the war generation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and feminism.  Kochetova studied journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University ...

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Jury comment

The jury felt this project was the most creative entries in the Open Format category. The emotive images make for a standout presentation amidst many entries about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Told by a Ukrainian photographer, the jury acknowledges this story's insider-perspective, which is especially evident in the thread of visual symbolism, strong use of color sequences, and collaborations with a Ukrainian illustrator and DJ. The engaging use of audio and illustration– particularly in the poetic diary and audio recordings– stood out, lending a film-like quality to the work.