It seems to be like a serene snapshot from Ukraine’s battlefield: A gaggle of armor-clad troopers huddled round a makeshift desk scattered with meals and taking part in playing cards. Some giggle or smoke, and one lounges on the bottom, smiling as he scrolls by his telephone.
The {photograph} is not like others of the Ukrainian front which have rallied folks in Ukraine over the course of the struggle — there isn’t any cannon fireplace, no troopers climbing out of trenches, no wounded fighters with faces contorted in ache.
Nonetheless, for the previous yr, the picture has been extensively shared on-line by Ukrainians and praised by authorities officers, who displayed it lately within the capital’s main exhibition middle as a result of it has struck on the coronary heart of the Ukrainian id battle attributable to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The {photograph} — staged and brought in late 2023 by Émeric Lhuisset, a French photographer — reimagines a well-known Nineteenth-century portray of Cossacks based in central Ukraine, with present-day Ukrainian troopers standing in for the legendary horse-riding warriors. The troopers’ poses and expressions are the identical, although swords have been changed by machine weapons.
The subject material is on the coronary heart of a culture war between Russia and Ukraine that has intensified since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion nearly three years in the past, with Ukrainians seeking to reclaim and assert an id that Russia says doesn’t exist.
The portray has been claimed by each Ukraine and Russia as a part of their heritages. It not solely depicts Cossacks, a those who each nations view as their very own, nevertheless it was additionally made by Illia Repin, an artist born in what’s at this time Ukraine however who did a lot of his work in Moscow and St. Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire.
It’s a cultural battle lengthy dominated by Russia. Probably the most well-known model of the portray is displayed in St. Petersburg, whereas one other lesser-known model is in Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine. Repin has been labeled Russian in international exhibitions, irritating Ukrainians who see him as one in every of their very own.
However Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art to reconsider this classification and relabel Repin as Ukrainian.
Together with his photographic reinterpretation, Mr. Lhuisset seeks to additional problem Russia’s narrative by drawing a direct line between the Cossacks, who at occasions resisted the rule of czarist Russia, and the present Ukrainian Military.
“You may’t perceive this struggle should you don’t perceive the entire problem of cultural appropriation,” Mr. Lhuisset, 41, mentioned in a latest interview in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. “This can be a actual cultural struggle.”
The portray — “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey” — is acquainted to most Ukrainians, with reproductions adorning many household properties. It reveals a gaggle of Cossacks from an space straddling at this time’s Zaporizhzhia area in southern Ukraine laughing heartily as they write a mocking reply to an ultimatum to give up from the sultan in 1676.
The Zaporizhzhia area is now partly beneath Russian occupation. The remaining has come beneath increasing Russian airstrikes in latest months.
Though historians say the depicted scene most definitely by no means occurred, the sense of defiance it conveys has resonated deeply in Ukraine.
“This portray was a component of self-identity formation for me,” mentioned Tetyana Osipova, 49, a Ukrainian servicewoman featured within the {photograph}. She recalled that her grandmother had saved a small copy “in a spot of honor” close to the Christian Orthodox icons of their house, the place it served as a reminder to “get up for your self.”
Mr. Lhuisset mentioned he first grasped the portray’s significance when he was in Kyiv throughout the 2014 rebellion that ousted a pro-Kremlin president. He remembered seeing protesters holding placards with reproductions of the paintings to represent “their willingness to not give up, to not submit.”
Again in France, the portray slipped from his thoughts.
Till Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Mr. Lhuisset was impressed by a information report a couple of Ukrainian border guard’s defiant and expletive-laden radio message to an oncoming Russian naval assault. The insulting reply instantly reminded him of the portray.
“For me, it was the Cossacks’ reply to the sultan,” he mentioned. “It appeared blindingly apparent.”
He determined to seize this spirit of defiance by recreating Repin’s portray in a contemporary setting. He spent months negotiating with the Ukrainian navy to get armed troops to pose for the {photograph} and to discover a secure place, north of Kyiv, to stage it. Some troopers got here straight from the entrance line, their mustachioed faces evoking the unruly Cossacks.
“They regarded like that they had stepped out of the portray!” mentioned Andrii Malyk, the press officer for Ukraine’s 112th Territorial Protection Brigade, which participated within the undertaking.
Mr. Lhuisset wished the {photograph} to be as near the portray as potential. He meticulously organized the 30 or so troopers, positioning their fingers and asking them to freeze in bursts of hearty laughter to echo the vitality of the unique scene. Objects within the portray had been changed with trendy equivalents: a slouch hat turned a helmet; a musket remodeled right into a rocket launcher; a mandolin was swapped for a transportable speaker.
A drone hovers within the sky, a nod to the plane with no crew which have turn out to be conspicuous on the battlefield.
Mr. Lhuisset launched the {photograph} a couple of days in a while social media, and it was rapidly embraced by Ukrainian media and authorities officers as an emblem of the nation’s spirit of independence. Ukraine’s Protection Ministry posted the picture on the social media platform X with the caption: “Cossack blood flows in our veins.”
To Ukrainians, the {photograph} served as a method to reclaim a masterpiece that they are saying has lengthy been misattributed to Russia, regardless of its Ukrainian roots.
“Some folks consider the portray as Russian, not Ukrainian,” mentioned Eduard Lopuliak, a fight medic featured within the {photograph}. “It’s a solution to remind them it’s our cultural heritage, not Russia’s.”
Russia, for its half, says that Repin is a Russian painter and that every one of his work must be thought-about Russian.
The painter was born in present-day Ukraine and studied artwork there earlier than transferring to St. Petersburg to additional his profession. Oleksandra Kovalchuk, a deputy head of the Odesa Positive Arts Museum, mentioned that Repin retained robust ties to Ukraine by pals there and by supporting Ukrainian artists. To depict the Cossacks with authenticity, he traveled throughout the nation and labored carefully with native historians, she mentioned.
In some ways, the {photograph} was Ukraine’s reply to Russia’s personal reinterpretation of the portray. In 2017, the Russian painter Vassily Nesterenko, a Kremlin favourite, reimagined the Cossacks in modern Russian uniforms, in a piece titled, “A Letter to Russia’s Enemies.”
The undertaking additionally carries a extra pressing mission for Ukraine: serving to it rebuild a cultural heritage devastated by practically three years of struggle.
Russian bombings of museums and theaters have destroyed numerous Ukrainian cultural treasures. Moscow’s occupation forces have additionally looted establishments just like the Kherson Regional Art Museum in southern Ukraine, which misplaced practically its total assortment.
To assist deal with the loss, Mr. Lhuisset traveled to Kyiv late final yr with a big print of his {photograph} and donated it to Alina Dotsenko, the museum’s director. “The Kherson museum at this time is an empty constructing,” he mentioned. “To turn out to be a museum once more, it wants a brand new assortment.”
The {photograph} was displayed for a day within the Ukrainian Home, a significant cultural middle in Kyiv, alongside empty frames left from the theft in Kherson. Like most of Ukraine’s artworks, it was then saved in a secure and secret location to guard it from Russian assault. It is going to be transferred to Kherson when the museum reopens, which is virtually not possible at this time as a result of it’s lower than a mile from the entrance line.
Mr. Malyk, the soldier, mentioned he hoped to go to the museum when the struggle was over to point out his youngsters the picture. Just like the portray, he mentioned, the {photograph} captures an vital second in Ukraine’s historical past.
“We hope it’s going to cross down by generations,” he mentioned.
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.
