Synkroniciti is honored to welcome back Ukrainian photographer and writer Viktoriia Sorochuk with the third installment of a series of photo essays exploring her displacement from her homeland due to the war. “Diaries During Wartime Part Three: Illusive Dream of Mountains” relates how Viktoriia had to leave her ancestral home in the Ukrainian Carpathian mountains to flee into uncertainty and how war leaves imprints on the psyche.
“We had to flee from the house where I took my first steps, where my great-grandmother read me fairy tales, where my grandpa and I planted potatoes together, where my grandmother made the tastiest borscht, where my parents and I made a gorgeous snow sculpture of a fairytale Snow Princess. I had to leave my roots. I was uprooted like a tree.”
As a refugee she has spent some time in the Polish Carpathian mountains but there were always reminders of war and circumstances overshadowed the beauty of the place.
“I watched paragliders soaring in the clouds every Friday and wondered how this landscape would look coated in white snow. At times this felt like a parallel universe because I always carried my mobile phone with me and, from time to time, looked at a map of air raid alerts in Ukraine. Sometimes the whole map turned red and then I couldn’t catch my breath and all the birds singing and the beauty of the landscape meant nothing. It all turned black and white to me and only that red pulsing map mattered.”
Viktoriia uses a short photo sequence to illustrate seasons passing and the disconnected impermanence of home: four panels with plants and flowers blended into a photograph of home. In the final panel an unpaved road cuts through the structure, making home seem like a ghost. She makes us long for the day when she is able to go back, and also to recognize that home will be different when she does return. Not only that, but she will be different–returning provides opportunity for fresh wounds.
Read “Diaries During Wartime Part Three: Illusive Dream of Mountains” in Synkroniciti’s “Identity” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. You don’t want to miss this important and moving voice. She will be back in “Recovery.”
My name is Viktoriia Sorochuk, and my superpower is—well, I am Ukrainian: I can cook a three-course meal even if my fridge is empty, make my husband nervous with just one phrase “Honey, we need to talk” and use Latin quotes just for the sake of making people look at me with round eyes.
While studying at school I hated writing essays. It was total torture for me and now I write with great pleasure. The best part is that others like to read what I write. As a kid I tried to learn watercolours but since I wasn’t patient enough today my best friend is a DSLR camera. The result is somewhat instant unless I forget to charge its battery or insert the memory card. I love dogs, good music and good visual art.