artillery shell 122 mm - Limited Edition 1 of 20 Photograph

The photo is the part of the project "Fragments of War". Life size scans of munition fragments found in the territory of the Donbas, with grooves and bends, whose sharp edges can easily kill or maim anyone on their way from the barrel to the place of impact and spalling. Each fragment has its own history, the circumstances in which I found it; origin, where it came from and how I came by it; place where it was found. After the spalling and impact begins another story. And now compiling a new history which describes what happened during the war, the participation of the people, soldiers, volunteers, citizens - everyone became a fragment that was knocked from his/her place in life and abandoned on the battlefield and up to pile into something new and powerful. Found in city Debaltseve in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine. weight - 91,6; 14,1; 16,1; 31,2; 34,3; 16,8 gram (from up to down, left to right) Artillery shell, probably 122 millimeters Caliber - 122 millimeters Destruction area - 800 square meters Maximum shooting range from howitzer 2A18 (D-30) - 15,2 kilometers Number of fragments 1-4 gram - 1000-1500 pieces Number of fragments weighing 4 and more gram - 400-850 pieces This war has gathered a lot of colorful and interesting people under its wing - people who left what they were doing and answered the call, primarily joining the volunteer battalions to defend their country. Why was it them who joined? Primarily because the majority of Ukrainians realized that the notion of sitting out is not their thing. - 1 - My friend Ivan Havrylko has two children and for that reason alone could avoid the August 2014 draft. At the forefront he got nicknamed the Geologist since he worked as a geodesist in the civilian life. We met in the summer of 2007 when we crossed the Black Sea on the SPAS boat to Georgia and back. We were young and passionate, true Cossacks. Ivan did indeed look like a Cossack - tall and powerful with a scalp lock - everyone instantly liked him. I went to visit him at the front in the Karlivka village near the infamous village of Pisky at the outskirts of Donetsk on the eve of 2015 New Year holidays. It was quiet there at the time, the village was away from the front line; only the so-called avatars (drunk soldiers) gave us grievances from time to time. The position was being gradually set up with bunkers being dug and insulated; the checkpoint worked and allowed transport and people pass in both directions. Ivan went would go on duty at the checkpoint. - 2 - Our itinerary for the next few days in the ATO area was to go though the villages of Stanystsa Luhanska and Novoaidar, Shchastia and Triokhizbenka. I went in the car of the Luhansk human rights activist Kostiantyn Reutskyi along with two other journalists. We were going to shoot a report about civilian life against the backdrop of the six-month-war raging in Ukraine. At the time Reutskyi acted as a reporter and cameraman - he was shooting and doing stand-ups, provided commentaries as well as interviewed officials, military, teachers and civilians. And before that he was looking for ways to reach understanding with separatists who has entrenched in the Security Service building in his home town of Luhansk but was soon forced to leave the city due to threats. He still believes that he will return to his hometown, that his family will return but he has already begun a new life in Kyiv. - 3 - After making the “War at one’s Own Expense” activist and filmmaker Leonid Kantor started shooting his second movie “The Ukrainians” - in order to do it he went to the Donetsk airport where fierce battles were underway and where all the news came from in late September 2014. But the goal of fighting for this remote outpost was incomprehensible to everyone; it was just a place where army forces of two countries were measuring each other up. Leonid left his family and his Obyrok farm for a while to document and film the fighters of the Ukrainian Volunteer Battalion The Right Sector who defended the airport and the nearby village of Pisky to show the whole world - which, at the time, saw only an endless stream of Russian propaganda - that Ukrainians are ready to fight against this powerful and mighty military machine no matter how frightening it may seem. - 4 - Triokhizbenka is a front line village. It is often shelled across the river by the separatists, as the Armed Forces and the Aidar battalion are on the outskirts of the village. There are frequent blackouts and local residents were living in the basements with the gas shut off to boot... We shot our report and went back encountering several military armored vehicles along the way moving towards us. We went on but after a few turns we seemed to got lost so we asked the way from the military guys who were discussing something in the middle of the field road in their old UAZ off-road truck. It turned out that they were policemen from the Novoaidar police department of the Luhansk region patrolling the area on their own initiative. After a short conversation we were invited to visit with them and spend the night... Their chief and head of the group was Leonid Pantykin who was a deputy chief of a police station in Luhansk six months ago and after the city was captured by the separatists and who managed to take about 500 children out of the occupied territories and was now the head of the Novoaidar police department. - 5 - I find myself in Mariupol once again. Planning to shoot something at the front line that was getting closer to the city and preparations for its defense, I was prepared for the fact that I could wind up staying there for a long time and perhaps find myself on the opposite side of the conflict if it is captured. During the street fighting the police station and the city administration buildings came under fire and they still stood damaged. The Red Cross was distributing aid to refugees nearby, there were roadblocks and residential buildings that would be shelled by the separatists’ MLRS Grad a few months later. I was shooting the city life, consequences and reactions of local residents. That is when I met a German guy who came in his own car to “stop the war” as he explained it. He was crazy and furious in some things and just lucky in other things - he spoke with Vitali Klitschko’s wife and explained to her how to stop the war, drow weird formulas like “√RATIO = LOVE”, planned to go to the President and the separatist leaders to try to persuade them to stop. I was afraid to leave him alone in the city since he was naive like a child. He wanted to go to the hospital and pass food he received from caring people on his long journey to the wounded soldiers, so we together since I actually wanted to visit the hospital myself. There were several lightly wounded there while all the badly wounded were taken to Dnipropetrovsk the day before. The German passed out various delicacies and for some reason coloring books for children. He was a strange man who somehow combined hatred for war and love of people, ideas of some global conspiracy and the wickedness of individual people, particularly Russian president Putin. He saw this war as a fight between good and evil, in each individual at that. We took a picture together in a photo booth and went our separate ways - he went on, and I decided to return to Kyiv. For more visit www.kupriyan.com

Photography:Color on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:30 W x 20 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.