The photobook Oleksandr Glyadyelov gathers more than thirty years of work by the Ukrainian documentary photographer in a single 29 × 29 cm hardcover volume. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Oleksandr Glyadyelov is organised into four thematic sections: the turbulent 1990s, vulnerable Children, civic Protest, and War as a long-term subject that extends across different regions of Ukraine. This structure reflects Glyadyelov’s conviction that time is not academic; images from different years collide to show how social structures fracture, collapse and reconfigure.
Working in black and white with a Leica camera, Oleksandr Glyadyelov records moments in which institutions fail and people at the margins become visible. The book focuses on Ukraine yet includes traces of his broader practice, from hospitals and prisons to frontlines and informal shelters. Texts by Volodymyr Yermolenko and others, produced in collaboration with FotoEvidence and IST Publishing, situate the images within recent Ukrainian history while keeping close to lived experience.
Printed in Kyiv in an edition of 1,000 copies, the book offers 276 pages in English and Ukrainian. It documents a country passing through transformation, trauma and persistence without spectacle, and shows how Glyadyelov’s sustained relationships with his subjects shape the field of Ukrainian documentary photography.
Oleksandr Glyadyelov (born 1956) is a Ukrainian documentary photographer whose work focuses on war, social crisis and life at the margins of society. Since the early 1990s he has photographed conflicts and armed clashes in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and, above all, Ukraine. Alongside frontline reporting he has developed long-term projects on vulnerable children, HIV/AIDS and post-Soviet prisons, often working with the same communities over many years.
His photographs have been widely exhibited, published in photobooks and used by humanitarian organisations. In 2020 Oleksandr Glyadyelov received the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, recognising both the artistic and civic significance of his practice. The photobook Oleksandr Glyadyelov reflects this sustained engagement, bringing his images into a single volume that traces the recent history of Ukraine through direct, unembellished observation.
