Research Grant for Ukrainian Lens-based Artists and Researchers

RGULAR

Vic Bakin (1984)

photographer/visual artist

"Last year I started a still-untitled and ongoing project about the Ukrainian queer scene. Working with youth portraiture in general and being queer myself I am very engaged in the queer scene specifically. Here, after years of forbiddance and reppression, the queer scene begins to sprout from the underground, little by little gains its own unique voice, different from others. I personally feel obliged to give this voice a visual form."

Yana Kononova (1977)

photographer/visual artist/researcher

"Since the end of March 2022, I have been working on an artistic study of the war. I take pictures on my medium format film camera of what has been happening in Ukraine since the beginning of the war with the Russian Federation. I move to areas that have been occupied or territories where hostilities have taken place. My focus is on traces of war crimes, destroyed civilian infrastructure, objects of the militaristic imagination of the invaders."

Nazar Furyk (1995)

photographer/visual artist

"In my photographic practice before the full scale invasion I captured, or more often, arranged everyday still lives and landscapes, combining artificial objects with elements of the natural environment. Most of all, I really appreciated the deliberate and precise chaos of nature when emphasizing the surrealist and fragile nature of the landscape with its strange power.


Now I try to go through the 'chaos', I try to capture people with big hopes for the life ahead, people with a powerful belief in freedom, faith, and courage, and to show all these fragilities in the photos."

Viacheslav Poliakov (1986)

photographer/designer

"I'm constantly trying to capture and share the unique aesthetic of my immediate environment. I record a combination of natural forms and human impact. Wild vegetation and signs of natural decay on the old walls, bleached by the southern sun of Kherson. Rusty metal fences and organic waste used as fertilisers in the backyards of Lviv. Graffiti layers on the gray soviet lime bricks. Old pain, re-captured and healed by nature.

With the full scale invasion of Russia, under the influence of images of torn apart bodies in the news feeds, I’ve started to tear apart the pictures I had. Mixing the records of old pain, almost vanished in time, with the new pain, live and growing."

Elena Subach (1980)

photographer/researcher/curator

"My goal is to portray and record oral stories of people who were forced to leave their homes because of the war. I ask about the experience of abandoning everything and going into the unknown, about the conditions those people live in now. The photos you can see here were taken in Lviv shelters for internally displaced persons. Theaters, schools, libraries, kindergartens, and offices have been converted into shelters."


One guy from Mariupol said, "In order to be able to evacuate from there, you had to become a different person—half-empty and semi-new. Otherwise, you had no chance to leave the city. You become a person with no past as it has been taken away, a person whose memories have no material basis. There is nothing you are left with, not even the graves of your parents."


Amina Ahmed

researcher/journalist/editor

Researcher of contemporary Ukrainian photography, journalist and editor based in Kyiv. Ahmed co-edited the UPHA Made in Ukraine anthology of Ukrainian photography, published by BOOKSHA in 2021, and was a senior editor of the Your Art media platform, dedicated to contemporary visual art in Ukraine. She is a co-curator of the artist-run-space Hlebzawod (Kyiv).

RGULAR Research Grant Program for Ukrainian Lens-Based Artists and Researchers

 

 

As part of our effort to support Ukraine throughout this horrific time, we want to focus on supporting Ukrainian photographers’ ability to continue their work. To do this EEP Berlin has launched RGULAR - Research Grant Program for Ukrainian Lens-Based Artists and Researchers.


Mission:

— to deal with the consequences the war poses on the Ukrainian photographic community;

— to ensure the continuity and further development of the Ukrainian photographic scene during the war.


Funding:

As of 2023 the ownership of the Research Grant is being transferred to our newly founded non-profit organization KV Fotografie aus Osteuropa e.V.

For 2022, we had originally planned to release the second issue of the EEP Magazine, but since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine our main priority shifted to looking for meaningful ways to support our Ukrainian friends and colleagues. Finally, we decided to transform the magazine’s budget into a funding program in support of Ukrainian lens-based artists and researchers.

DONATE

The Grant Program was funded in April of 2022 by EEP Berlin which provided an initial backing of €10 000 which were given out in the form of research grants of €250 per month for the duration of six to nine months.


The grants are given out to photographers, writers, curators and researchers who are working with specific focus on the current situation in Ukraine.


The Program is primarily aimed at supporting work-in-progress and currently ongoing research. We are mainly interested in allowing practitioners some much needed space for experimentation and research, in bringing attention to their process and not the final result. Professionals who in their respective functions are active in the preservation of Ukraine’s photographic archives will also be considered.


Requirements:

The participants agree to share excerpts of the work funded for the documentation of the organization's activities.

Due to the immense complexity of each personal situation EEP Berlin will not account for the ways in which the funds are being spent. It is up to each individual to decide on the way they want to use the grant. Nevertheless, while we are happy to make exceptions depending on the case, the grant is not intended for technical equipment.

EEP Berlin would like to pay individual attention to the work of each participant and will be grateful to periodically receive updates on the work created. The updates can be in the form of images, screenshots, video, sound, writing, and other.**

To apply please fill out this form.

 

 

 

 

We asked: What are the most meaningful ways to support the Ukrainian photographic community?

Scholarships that allow us to continue our work and give the world a more in-depth perspective on the situation in Ukraine.

- Nazar Furyk

Push your cultural institutions to understand their colonial approach to all ex-members of the Russian empire.

- Viacheslav Poliakov

Ensure artists' visibility and active participation in the international photographic context, assist them in building new cultural networks and in maintaining existing ones.

- Viktoria Bavykina