Très belle galerie de photos, le Donbass avant…
par Valeriya Myronenko
Life before war in Ukraine’s Donbas
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/life-before-war-in-ukraines-donbas-2-357103.html
“Of course it’s better to work in kopankas than on the government-owned mines,” one coal miner, who just slid out from a 100-meter-deep rabbit-hole in an aluminum bathtub, told me. “It’s closer to the surface, you get paid daily, and you don’t have to give a bribe to get here.” Doesn’t exactly fit a dream job description, but if you’re a resident of a small town in the Donbass, your employment options are far from bright.
A coal miner sits in aluminum tub waiting to roll into caves as small as 50 centimeters high and 100 meters deep. Miners have little to no protection from coal dust and methane while inside.
© Valeriya Myronenko
à l’autre bout du cable, le treuil…
A man operates a makeshift hoist created using metal wires and car engines. It’s purpose? To pull workers out of the mine. Miners communicate through vibrations of metal wire, that is stretched over the wood stump.
© Valeriya Myronenko
Les restes de la sidérurgie
A significant drop in production volumes left large spaces within factories abandoned.
© Valeriya Myronenko
Cerise sur le gâteau pour les amateurs…
The abandoned theatre in Alchevsk built by Nazi German hostages after World War II. The frame once held a biblical allusion to Josef Stalin descending down the grand staircase.
© Valeriya Myronenko
Et la présentation de la photographe par le Kyiv Post
Editor’s Note: Valeriya Myronenko is a Toronto-based photographer with background in advertising and graphic design. Having spent most of her life in one of the small cities in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern coal-mining and industrial regions, she still has strong ties there. Her family continues to live there. During her trips home, Myronenko decided to create a project that will shed light on the daily realities in eastern Ukraine, that remained obscure not only to the Western, but also to the Ukrainian media. Her discovery shows life before the Russian-backed war came in April to Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, home to 15 percent of the Ukrainian nation.