Pharmakon / Ambulance 1994-1995

Alexander Chekmenev
Pharmakon / Ambulance 1994-1995

Photographs: Alexander Chekmenev

Text: Donald Weber, Alexander Chekmenev

Publisher: 89 Books

132 pages

Pictures: 71

Year: 2021

Price: 40 €

Comments: Softcover, 23 x 17 cm. Images and descriptive texts that the artist made following ambulances in Ukraine.

Look at Sasha’s photographs in this book. See how they have tied the dead man’s wrists off with clean white rags, and placed his battered head on a perch of kindness?
They’re troublesome, disturbing – they are certainly not easy to engage with.  You have every right to be disturbed by them. I certainly am.  But there’s something more to these photographs than just easy gore; think of them as images drawn from Ukraine’s bitter history, where its exposure to new armies  and ideologies on Europe’s eastern flanks has made it the premier killing ground  for a thousand years.

Donald Weber