And I saw it again: the law of the inhibiting lead. In the past everybody knew about the television that was controlled by the state. Nowadays some of the channels are more transparent and democratic than for example the Dutch broadcasting associations.
I heard it a few times now: ‘I was never really concerned about it, but now I have to choose between Europe and Russia.’ Not a single conversation in Ukraine is not about politics, the war, the future. But it’s different for all how to choose which side they are.
It is a two hours and forty-five minutes flight from Amsterdam to Kiev. From Kiev to Mariupol it takes 18 hours (train and bus) or 21 hours (train non-stop). Well, the global world. Distances change.
But how big is Ukraine really?
To give an example: here’s a picture. From The Hague till the Polish-Ukrainian border. More or less.
I am working at my laptop, and organizing all the city maps I found until now, through contacts, museums and internet. The oldest map is displaced in the Historical Museum in Mariupol. A cemetery plan that must date 3000 Before Christ. During this ancient period in time there seems to have been a settlement. Back then it was a strategic location as well, right at the see, with fruitful ground, and a stop between east and west.
I am in the Netherlands for a few meetings on other projects. Now it’s late evening and I am skipping through the pictures I made of Mariupol. They are both beautiful and sad.
At one of our meetings that had been organized for us in Mariupol we met a guy that worked in the advertisement business. I thought of him while making this picture. He was really worried about the looks of the city and the enormous amount of randomly places billboards. ‘The city has been sold’ he said. ‘Capitalism does not have to be that ugly.’
I am back in Kiev, and now I notice how many soldiers there actually were in Mariupol. Here you hardly see them. And definitely not in groups or in tanks.
Walking around the left bank of Mariupol, just behind the Azov Steel Factory, we came across this map.
I talked to Alexander, one of the young employees of Izolyatsia, the organization for culture and architecture. Alexander, but everybody calls him Sasa, is originally from Donetsk, the city that is occupied by the separatists of the Donets People Republic.
picture credits: Justin Tyler Tate
Today I swam in the Azov Sea. I can take that off my bucket list. The beach where we were is about an hour drive from Mariupol. So everything was a lot cleaner than in the city itself, where all the steel factories dump their waste into the river and the sea. But anyway, for coral and special species you really don’t need to come to this region at the moment.