Portrait of a Village, Ukraine, Lida Suchy’s solo exhibition at the ArtRage Gallery, documents and reflects on life in Kryvorivyna, a village of 2,000 people located in Western Ukraine, in the Carpathian Mountains.
The show, consisting of 26 black-and-white images, offers an intimate look at elders and children, at family life, at the topology of a community situated high in the hills. Viewers will encounter photos of a couple on their wedding day, of a mother and daughter seen first in 1994 and then in 2004, of Eudosia Sorochan, a former political prisoner who spent a decade in forced labor camps.
Those images come from a body of work created not during a single visit to Kryvorivyna but during several stays. Suchy, a photographer living in Syracuse, is the child of parents who fled Ukraine during World War II, lived in a camp for displaced persons, and eventually emigrated to the United States where they lived in Montana, North Dakota and Rochester, New York.
Suchy first traveled to the village in 1992, at a time when the Soviet Union had disintegrated and Ukraine had become independent. She came back during the 1990s, once staying for a year. And she returned to Kryvorivyna in 2012 and 2014 and 2016.
In the course of the project, she’s taken numerous portraits, mostly using a bulky, 8X10 view camera. She doesn’t see herself as someone who orchestrates portraits. Rather, she views it as a give-and-take process, a collaboration between two people. She prefers to engage a subject at length, to have a long conversation.
And the photographic work doesn’t take place in a studio. At ArtRage, there are images of a young brother and sister with a horse on a pasture above the village, of Vasyl Potjak in front of a house, of a kitchen table filled with various foods on Christmas Eve, of Father Ivan Rybaruk performing a rite of absolution during a pilgrimage. He’s standing with a young parishioner in a forest.
For Suchy, each portrait is part of a larger effort to create a composite view of Kryvorivyna, a place that plays a special role in the realm of Ukrainian culture. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a novel with overtones of Romeo and Juliet, was written there in 1911 and transformed into a movie in the village in 1965. In addition, Ivan Franko, a novelist and scholar, lived in Kryvorivyna; today, there’s a museum dedicated to him.
Suchy admires the commitment of local people to preserving Ukrainian culture. Over several centuries, the region has endured rule by various regimes, including Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union. “They kept their culture alive even during Soviet rule,” she said,
That point of view takes on additional significance in February, 2023, one year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and during a time when war still rages. Suchy has dedicated to the exhibit to the people of Ukraine, to all those stand in support of Ukraine, and to those who have lost their lives.
In terms of the exhibit itself, she hopes that it will have multiple showings. Portrait of a Village, Ukraine had its premiere at Washington and Lee University before being displayed at ArtRage. She plans to seek additional venues and is also interested in publication in a book format. Her Kryvorivyna portfolio is large; the current exhibition presents only a segment of it.
Suchy has completed a variety of other projects in the past. She documented a Roma community in Slovakia, created portraits of the members of the Syracuse Community Choir, and from time to time has photographed Ukrainian Americans living in upstate New York.
Moreover, she received a Guggenheim fellowship and was recognized as a Fulbright Scholar. Her photos are in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Eastman Museum of Photography, and Kryvorivyna’s Hrushevsky Museum, among others.
Portrait of a Village, Ukraine finishes its run at ArtRage on March 11. The gallery, located at 505 Hawley Ave., is open from 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. The venue is free and open to the public.
ArtRage has scheduled several programs in conjunction with the exhibition. On Feb. 23, between 7 and 9 p.m., Miso Suchy, a professor of film at Syracuse University, will show excerpts from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and also screen a contemporary film, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange. And on March 2, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Pat Burak, who teaches Russian and Ukrainian literature at Syracuse University, will discuss Ukraine: Beyond Headlines. Exploring Ukrainian Literature. For more information, call 315-218-5711 or access www.artragegallery.org.
Carl Mellor wrote about visual arts from the Syracuse New Times from 1994 to 2019. He continues to write about exhibitions and artists in the Syracuse area.
DETAILS:
What: Portrait of a Village, Ukraine, photography by Lida Suchy
When: Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 2-6 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Exhibit runs through March 11.
Where: ArtRage gallery, 505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse
Tickets: Free and open to the public