Kharkiv School of Photography is an artistic milieu that emerged in the 1970s in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine. It was a school of aesthetic thought which never had any official status, where 'education' happened in clubs and coffee shops — not a school to attend classes. Still, the artists created an original visual language that broke free from the dominant Soviet dogma in arts. It defined the discourse for the next generations in Kharkiv and entire Ukraine and evolved into a distinctive aesthetic system, offering a documentary chronicle of over 50 years of its history.

A viewer who never lived in the Soviet Union may find some of the facts hard to believe. Why was it illegal to take photos of markets and train stations? Why nude images were taboo and could result in an interview with the KGB? Why did photographers need photo clubs to legalize their activities? These questions, among others, trigger contemplations on the variety of paths to democratic transformation in Eastern Europe.

This is a comprehensive (but by no means exhaustive) online archive of over 2200 images by 29 artists of Kharkiv photographers arranged in Groups and Artists by generations, groups, and individual artists. Curatorial narratives can be found on the About KSP page, the Three Generations page, and in artists’ profiles.

Stories play with a popular social network format and the number of frames (12, 24, or 36) in an analog photographic film. They are illustrated studies on thematic and formal sides of Kharkiv photography: censorship in the USSR, the far from humanistic realities of Soviet and post-Soviet hospitals, new forms of visual expression and new techniques, contemporary works of Kharkiv artists, etc.

What was it like — being a photographer in a state of total control? Did ‘different’ necessarily mean ‘anti-Soviet’? Is body still an indicator of ‘societal morale’ and what does feminist discourse have to do with it? What were the links between Ukrainian, Polish and Baltic states’ photographers and why these communications were important? Did the collective historical trauma of the 20th century find its expression in their œuvre? Does Kharkiv photography resonate with Ukrainian avant-garde of the 1920s?

Video section presents interviews with Kharkiv School artists recorded by VASA Project and exhibition openings of 1992, 1998, and 2004. All the videos have English subtitles. Bibliography is a database of publication references on KSP from Ukrainian and international sources.

This portal is created within the Ukrainian Institute’s #UkraineEverywhere program to showcase Ukraine's contribution to the world culture via online projects. Ukraine Everywhere is an attempt to manifest and systematize the presence of Ukraine in the histories and cultures of different countries and communities, to return the proper attribution of 'Made in Ukraine' to those individuals, things, and phenomena that were not perceived as Ukrainian due to the longtime absence of Ukrainian subjectivity. The program projects present to foreign audiences Ukrainian phenomena, names, and contexts that have left their mark in the world culture but are not always known abroad as Ukrainian.

The project curator is Igor Manko, a lead curator at VASA Project. Project partners: VASA Project, an international portal for media studies, the Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP), Kharkiv, Ukraine. The project is implemented by Bagels & Letters PR-Agency, Kharkiv, Ukraine.