Oleksandr Glyadelov

Oleksandr Glyadelov (b. 1956) is a Ukrainian documentary photographer who has covered wars and armed conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and Ukraine. Beyond frontline photography he developed long-term projects about vulnerable children, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and post-Soviet prisons. His photographs have been widely exhibited and published in photobooks, and have received numerous awards, including the Taras Shevchenko National Prize (2020).

This photobook summarizes more than thirty years of Glyadelov’s documentary practice. Known for his black-and-white Leica photographs, he captures not only events or people, but vulnerable states of society itself: moments when structures crack, foundations collapse and something painfully real emerges through fragility.

Although Glyadelov’s photographic practice spans many countries and contexts — from Central Asia to Africa — this photobook focuses exclusively on images made in Ukraine. Yet it is not an archive, nor a linear narrative. “Time is not academic” Hlyadelov notes. This idea shapes the structure of the publication: instead of chronology, the book is organized into thematic sections outlining four central directions of his practice. The 1990s as an era of transformation and collapse; Children as an intimate view into vulnerability; Protest as a phase of collective self-definition and War as an ongoing subject the author has documented both in Ukraine and beyond.