Photobook Alexander Glyadelov

This photobook summarizes over thirty years of documentary photographer Oleksandr Glyadelov’s practice. Known for his black-and-white Leica photographs, he captures not just events or characters, but the vulnerable states of society itself: moments when structures crack, when pillars crumble, and in this fragility the real emerges.

Although Glyadelov’s photographic practice spans a variety of countries and contexts, from Central Asia to Africa, this photobook focuses exclusively on images taken in Ukraine. However, it is not an archive or a coherent narrative. “Time is not academic,” Glyadelov notes. This stance determines the composition of the publication: instead of chronology, thematic sections outline four key areas of his practice. The 1990s as a phenomenon of transformation and decay; Children as a view from within a vulnerable situation; Protest as a phase of social self-determination; War as a long-term theme, which the author consistently documents in Ukraine and beyond.

Gladelov’s camera works in a field of trust: with those who are usually not shown (or shown from the outside), and maintains a strong, lasting connection with the heroes that goes far beyond the frame. That is why his photographs are not just testimonies “about”, but testimonies together.

For decades, Gladelov has been shaping the field of Ukrainian documentary photography — through attention to those who find themselves on the edge, through consistent work with crisis communities, through the willingness to be there where others do not stay. This is an attempt to see the country at a time of change — in its pauses, tension, trauma and dignity.

Oleksandr Gladelov (born 1956) is a Ukrainian documentary photographer who has covered wars and armed conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and Ukraine. Outside of frontline photography, he has worked on long-term projects on vulnerable children, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and post-Soviet prisons. His photographs have been widely exhibited, published in photo books, and have won numerous awards, including the National Taras Shevchenko Prize (2020).