AP’s Ukrainian photographers exhibited at Visa pour l’image
They were the first and last journalists in Mariupol, a heavily bombed port city, and their images went around the world. Evgeniy Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov are the authors of the poignant photos of the hospital and the maternity ward, of a father collapsed on the bleeding remains of his son, of a couple in tears carrying the corpse of their baby… So many shots exposed at the Visa pour l’image news photography festival in Perpignan, until September 11th.
From February 23 to March 15, they have, at all costs, transmitted their images to the world from the ruins of this city of 400,000 inhabitants. Covering a war in one’s own country, such as Ukraine, affects “the soul, the heart”, they confide. “These twenty days have been like one long endless day, getting worse and worse”told Agence France-Presse Evgeniy Maloletka, 35, photographer for the Associated Press (AP) agency, still in his country, where “there is no time to recover like other journalists who spend a month and then go home”.
“Of all I covered, this was by far the most dangerous, with no place to go to safety”says Mstyslav Chernov, 37, a trained photographer and videographer for AP, according to which “We don’t recover from such a story, we continue! »
Sergei Supinsky’s images of the corpses of civilians, in the streets of Boutcha in March, now support the UN’s denunciation of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.