The first thing I noticed about Ira Lupu was her confidence. She did not look nervous as the Semans Lecture Hall gradually filled with people; instead, she seemed to understand and dismiss the spotlight on her. Lupu was visiting Davidson College to discuss her photography exhibit “Ukraine – Sleeping Disorder,” displayed in the E. Craig Wall Academic Center, with Russian Studies chair Amanda Ewington and Van Every Smith director Lia Newman. However, I soon realized that her presentation was about much more than war photography or even the Russia-Ukraine war at large. It was also about Ira Lupu, not just as a photographer or Ukrainian, but as an individual. Lupu’s personal perspective reframed my understanding of the injustices of the Russia-Ukraine war. She reminded me that those injustices matter not only because of their global ramifications, but also because of their individualized impact.
From the beginning of her lecture, Lupu’s discourse emphasized the individual and personal in the midst of the Russia-Ukraine War. She opened her speech by explaining that Ukrainians continue to fight on behalf of “people in occupied territories”: the war is not about lost land, but human suffering. She also shared her personal and emotional response to the fighting. Although her exhibit only presents photographs from “wartime Ukraine,” Lupu introduced her work by describing her personal history, from her 2019 immigration to America, to her first major photography project, to her reaction on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. She described sitting on her couch in Queens, New York when she heard the news, and though she retained her composure onstage, it was clear that the “physical” feelings she had experienced remained vivid. Over the next few years, her visits to Ukraine felt like “surreal” combinations of peaceful beaches and alarming explosions. Departing after her first visit, Lupu confessed, left her heart not quite in the right place, like she had argued with someone she loved. Such profoundly personal insight further emphasized the war’s impact on her as an individual. However, her immediate artistic response to the conflict was not to display her perspective, but other Ukrainains’ reactions. She organized a 2022 exhibit that shared the events of the war through Ukrainian art, further affirming the importance of Ukrainian perspectives for meaningful calls for justice—and implying that her art could not stand in for their perspectives, nor truly represent their experiences.
In addition to the value of individual perspectives, Lupu also emphasized the importance of context in photography. For her, she explained, photographs cannot capture all of “what war is.” They need context to convey its full visual and non-visual impact. In her exhibits, captions provide context for her photographs. For her, context comes from her relationships with the people she portrays.1 For me, viewing her artwork the day after her presentation, the context was Ira Lupu herself, the real, individual person behind each piece. Recognizing photos from Lupu’s lecture made “them—I don’t know about more powerful, but differently impactful,” I wrote as I observed “Ukraine – Sleeping Disorder.” Each flicker of remembrance forced me to stop and look more closely because I had encountered Lupu’s individual perspective about the piece before me. I could not turn away.
Lupu’s presentation made “Ukraine – Sleeping Disorder” more impactful for me, but it also reframed my awareness of the war at large. At the beginning of the event, panelist Amanda Ewington explained that Lupu’s visit was intended to raise awareness of ongoing fighting in Ukraine (Lupu et al.). By her very presence, Lupu succeeded in recentering my thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine war. However, based on my interaction with Lupu and her work, I find that her personal goals go beyond calling attention to violent injustices. Instead, her work and her discussion about it attest that Russia’s aggression personally impacts her and the individuals she documents. The obvious problems facing Ukraine—including bombings, burnings, destruction—are not injustices simply because they happen. They are injustices because they impact individual people.
Throughout her lecture, Lupu frequently repeated the phrase “what war is” (Lupu et al). After hearing her, I find that, no matter what war means in its entirety, its definition must include its personal impact. The Russia-Ukraine war’s greatest transgression is not its destruction of Ukrainian institutions, economy or government. Instead, its injustice stems from its impact on the individual people who make those institutions meaningful.
- Lupu showed the audience photographs of Ukrainian convicts who had volunteered to fight on the front lines and remarked, without changing her tone, that she was still in touch with those of them still alive. She probably won’t photograph them again, but nevertheless, “the story [is] still—developing,” she reflected (Lupu et al.). ↩︎
Works Consulted
“A Conversation with Ukrainian Photographer Ira Lupu.” WildcatSync, Davidson College, wildcatsync.davidson.edu/event/10627793.
Lupu, Ira, et al., panelists. “A Conversation with Ukrainian Photographer Ira Lupu.” 14 November 2024, Semans Lecture Hall, Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Arts Center, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.
Lupu, Ira. “Ukraine – Sleeping Disorder.” E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.
