What does the water remember?
What does the fish remember?
What does the shore remember,
where the fish ended up,
when the water receded?
What do I remember,
walking along the shore,
Where the fish ended up,
when the water receded?
What does the fish remember?
What does the shore remember,
where the fish ended up,
when the water receded?
What do I remember,
walking along the shore,
Where the fish ended up,
when the water receded?
In summer 2023, after the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, I returned to my hometown of Zaporizhzhia to witness the aftermath along the Dnipro River. The water level had dropped 4–5 meters, leaving dried shorelines, stranded boats, and dead fish — landscapes at once painful and strangely beautiful. What began as witnessing became an urgent need to document.
This project is both documentary and personal: a record of war’s impact on nature and a dialogue with the places of my childhood now transformed. Once-vibrant wetlands are cracked and dry, and ships lie beached where waters have receded.
The work combines black-and-white film, cyanotypes made with river algae and reeds, and color films soaked in Dnipro water, allowing the river itself to leave its imprint. As the full ecological consequences remain unknown, this series is an open-ended exploration, bearing witness to an environment in flux.
The dried up bank of the Dnipro looks exposed as if ashamed to show its body. It is scattered with stones and shells (like moles) and remnants of water lilies. The algae which I used to fear getting tangled in when swimming into the depths as a child have completely disappeared, dried up in the sun. Just like back then you can only step on water chestnuts in the sand but now they resemble a to tank hedgehogs.
The shore is covered with glass bottles and pieces of glass. Will I find a note from the past in one of them? Does that past exist? Covered with patches of reeds, dead fish, nets that caught not only fish but also the shiny skin of a snake, a plastic bag, a tree branch, a rubber boot and I too seem to be tangled in these nets. There are small boats slowly rusting like nails and larger boats with decks and steering wheels. They have names like “Laguna” or “Breeze” that dreamt of becoming a yacht or a cruise liner when they were older.
What do they dream about when on this endless shore that’s leads to a dried up sea? I would like to learn their language to find out. I heard them talking to each other, one creaking with a long chain like an abandoned dog tied to the dock. Another with the cries of a seagull sitting on the mast slowly swaying in time with the waves that are no longer there.
Children play in the sand running and racing to jump into the water with cannonballs that splash water onto my face while I laugh along with them. Yesterday nearby sappers destroyed a Worlds War II bomb, seemingly a FAB-50. This summer many have found them here. For 80 years the shells lay underwater and now they are on the surface heating up in the sun with some exploding. A siren sounds “Zaporizhzhia region air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter”.
