Look at Alexander Chekmenev’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)