I must have been around ten years old when I first heard about Ukraine.
To an Argentine child, it sounded distant and almost exotic, a place defined more by imagination than by geography. Through a new friend from my neighborhood, Vitaliy, and his mother Natalia, I began to hear stories that awakened my curiosity: fragments of another language, another history, another way of belonging to the world.
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, that childhood memory came back unexpectedly. I found myself wondering what had become of Vitaliy. Did he remain in Argentina? Did he return to Ukraine? Did the country I had once imagined through stories and accents now resemble the images filling the news?
This project emerges from those unresolved questions, and from the desire to bring memory into dialogue with reality through sound and image.
Each photograph is accompanied by a sound recording made in the same place. While the camera freezes a moment, sound extends it, capturing what surrounds, precedes, and remains beyond the frame. Wind, voices, footsteps, silence, and distant sirens form a parallel archive of presence.
Working on Svema Foto 400, a Ukrainian-made film stock, I slow down the photographic act, allowing time, grain, and imperfection to become part of the image.
Rather than attempting to document Ukraine as a whole, I Had a Friend from Ukraine (2025) is an artistic research project that embraces fragments and absences. It is not about finding a lost friend, but about inhabiting the space between what is seen and what can only be heard.
«Майдан Незалежності» (Independence Square)
«Вулиця Івана Франка» (Ivan Franko Street)
«6041 Київ – Васильків-Центр» (6041 Kyiv – Vasylkiv Center)
«Патріотичне містечко» (Patriotic Town)
«Пам'ятник авіаторам» (Monument to the Aviators)
«Хрещатик» (Khreshchatyk)
«Снігова королева» (The Snow Queen)
«Україна-Мати» (Mother Ukraine)
«Казки Гофмана» (Tales of Hoffmann)
This project was developed during my studies in photography at the Academy of Art and Design at the University of Gothenburg. Thanks to Charlotta Gavelin for her mentorship and for helping me envision the direction of this photographic work.
Special thanks to Nataliia Beliakova from the city of Vasylkiv for the warm welcome and reception in Ukraine. What will stay with me most are the people I met along the way: kind, brave, unforgettable.