When photographer Anton Shebetko came up with an idea to create a series of photos featuring LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) people who fought in Ukraine’s east, he didn’t believe he would find people willing to participate. In a couple of months, he had a set of artistic pictures and frank interviews and was getting ready for the exhibition.
Called “We were here,” the exhibition aims to prove that LGBT people are involved in fighting for Ukraine’s independence despite a stereotype they only stand up for the rights of their community.
Shebetko says that LGBT people went to fight in the country’s east after Russia unleashed the war there in 2014 for a variety of reasons.
“They feel the need to protect their country, they see the point in this and many of them do it well. The fact that you are gay or lesbian does not interfere with your ability to shoot accurately at the target,” the photographer told the Kyiv Post in the interview on Aug. 27.
“We were here” exhibits video installations and photos of eight people, who are difficult to identify as their faces are hidden. Despite their willingness to take part in the project, they didn’t want to take a risk revealing themselves because of society’s intolerance.
The exhibition opened at cultural center Izone on Aug. 30 and will last until Oct. 7.
Shebetko, 28, was born and raised in Kyiv. Having a background in journalism, he shifted to photography 2.5 years ago. As he is gay, Shebetko is especially interested in exploring LGBT people through art — this is his sixth photo project about them.
The artist moved to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, around a year ago. However, he soon came back to Kyiv, as he was selected as one of the three artists for the project “Coming Out of Isolation: Through Art to Visibility” funded by Izoliatsiia fund, non-profit KyivPride and EVZ Foundation.
When he came back to Ukraine in March, he realized that the war was still going on and it kept affecting the country. Shebetko knew that the media occasionally covered the “LGBT at war” topic, however, they always missed the visual content.
“I wanted to rethink artistically their experience and dual identities of both military patriots and representatives of LGBT,” he said.
Photo and video exhibition “We were here” by Ukrainian artist Anton Shebetko features LGBT people who fought in Ukraine’s east. It will last until Oct. 7 at Izone cultural center in Kyiv. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Looking for characters
“We were here” offers video interviews, artistic videos symbolizing right radicalism and intolerance and a series of eight pictures featuring soldiers, paramedics and volunteers providing the Ukrainian army with equipment.
All of the exhibited photos combine military and LGBT symbols — one wears uniform having his face and arms painted with camouflage in LGBT colors, the other one poses wearing a uniform and holding graffiti cans in front of the graffitied in LGBT colors wall.
And all of the pictures are full-height portraits that resemble a fashion lookbook, as Shebetko wanted to give it a taste of fashion photoshoot.
The project’s participants included two lesbian women, five gay men and one transgender man.
Shebetko said he was surprised he managed to find that many people who agreed to participate, as some of the potential participants ignored Shebetko’s offer, some refused to join and some constantly hesitated almost leaving the photo studio right before the shooting.
He says that many in Ukraine take combining these topics as an insult and might react to the project aggressively.
“This is a sore subject for Ukraine,” Shebetko said.
That is why the photographer made anonymity a part of the concept — he used camouflage as decoration, makeup and clothing in order to hide people’s identities.
Frank stories
Along with photographs, Shebetko did interviews with the participants. He says he wanted to share their stories because they were different people with different views and experiences.
They mostly kept in secret their sexual identities from the comrade-in-arms, while some shared it with one or two closest friends at the front line.
Shebetko wanted to understand how such brave people fighting for their country and risking their lives could have such a tremendous fear of confessing they were non-heterosexual.
He says that it’s so paradoxical because they are scared of not being accepted by the Ukrainian society.
“It’s almost as if their identity is divided into two parts,” he said.
One of the participants, a 34-year-old soldier who lives in a small town of Odesa Oblast was one of the hardest interviews to conduct, as he wasn’t used to talking about such topics, Shebetko says.
“He couldn’t winkle that he was gay,” he said. “You realize how inhibited, closed and intimidated the man is.”
However, for some of the participants, the project became a turning point in their lives.
Viktor Pylypenko, who fought in Donbas battalion in 2014–2016, posed for one of Shebetko’s pictures in a balaclava but later decided to reveal his identity to the public and came out as gay in June.
Pylypenko, 31, hid his orientation from his military comrades. In order not to get suspected, he even had sex with prostitutes, as they visited a private bathhouse together.
He says he didn’t feel the need to open up about it at the war but after the conversation with Shebetko he changed his mind.
“He led me to the fact that I live a hidden unhappy life. And I might even unconsciously deceive myself,” Pylypenko told the Kyiv Post.
As soon as Shebetko published the first part of the project online, Pylypenko shared it to his Facebook page and confessed he was one of the models.
“I decided to make my life more real and maybe help other people who are reproached and humiliated for no reason too, and to show to my country that there are gay people at the front,” he said.
And soldiers from the Donbas battalion, for the most part, reacted approvingly to Pylypenko’s revelation and supported him, he says.
According to Pylypenko, some of them used to believe in stereotypes about LGBT people, as many of them have never known an open LGBT person. However, they have rethought their views.
“Such steps change people’s minds,” Pylypenko said.
