Photography as Testimony: Insecurities, "Bareness" of Life, and Resilience during the War in Ukraine

This article is written on the basis of the visual material collected during field trips to Ukraine in 2014, 2016, 2017 and in February-March 2022. The analysis is built on three concepts that have been meaningfully re-signified through war photography. One is human (in)security with its strong biopolitical connotations earlier described in the academic literature as a particular regime of care-taking in times of military conflicts. The second biopolitical concept that resonates in war photography is Giorgio Agamben's academic metaphor of bare life as a direct effect of the violent projection of the "Russian World" onto Ukraine. Thirdly, the vernacular dimensions of war-time human insecurities, visualized through the prism of photography opens important avenues for discussing new facets of the concept of resilience.