Where the Rivers Come Together is a photography and writing project by Gabriela Bulišova and Mark Isaac that explores the surprising diversity that exists in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, which is home to as many as 133 different national communities. Although the city is dominated by Ukrainians and Russians, its spirit and public life are defined by the much smaller groups whose influence extends well beyond their actual numbers, creating an unmistakable heterogeneity in the city’s language, culture, and cuisine.
Mykolaiv was created by Prince Grigory Potemkin at the confluence of the Southern Bug and Ingul Rivers for the purpose of building warships. But at a time when Ukraine and so many parts of the globe are enmeshed in war and conflict, Mykolaiv’s diverse communities have lived almost entirely in peace for generations. Bulišova and Isaac explored this paradox by focusing on individual members of these communities, interviewing them to learn more about their personal experiences and to better understand their strategies for peaceful coexistence. They made portraits of the participants and then paired them in diptychs with a place or object of great importance to each person’s cultural heritage.
In an article accompanying the photographs, the artists highlight the very personal, face to face approach of Mykolaiv residents as a key reason the city has been able to maintain peace and friendship over the years. However, in the age of fake news and the instant amplification of prejudice and hatred, younger community members are turning to social media as their most important means of engagement, raising important questions for the future.
Zhanna is a multitalented young Armenian woman whose rendition of a traditional Armenian song was one of the highlights of the yearly Mykolaiv Druzhba (Friendship) Festival. She is also an exceptional scholar whose paper on the Armenian genocide was featured at a conference on the Holocaust in Kyiv. Zhanna treasures the Armenian church in Mykolaiv, constructed in 2012, which is a place “where I can find peace for my soul.”
Tamara is one of approximately 60,000 Russians in Mykolaiv, by far the largest of the national communities. She goes out of her way to emphasize that she embraces her Ukrainian nationality along with her Russian heritage, and that she desires peace between the nations. She spends long hours supporting a wide variety of other national communities because she believes that harmony among different peoples is built on mutual respect and understanding. Here, dressed in traditional Russian clothing, she enters a birch grove on the banks of the Southern Bug River. She reveres birch trees as a longtime symbol of Russia.
Sergey is an artist whose works have been commissioned by local churches and theaters. He traveled with the Roma community in a bus to Krivoye Ozero, the location of a Roma massacre during World War II. During the 5-hour bus trip, he shared this watch, which served his grandfather, a reconnaissance pilot, faithfully throughout the conflict but stopped working as soon as the war ended. He recently had the watch repaired, and he walked up and down the aisle of the bus, asking every passenger to listen to the sound of the war.
Tanya is the director of the Israeli Cultural Center at Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University in Mykolaiv. The center maintains close ties between students and the nation of Israel. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Jews made up as much as one-fourth of Mykolaiv’s population, but after the Holocaust and a wave of emigration to Israel in the post-Soviet era, only 4,000 to 5,000 remain in this city of 500,000. Tanya reverently pointed to her religious name, Hanna, in a Jewish sacred text.
Elena Vesnova is a teacher at Children’s Art School #1, focused on serving local Bulgarian youth in the Ternovka section of Mykolaiv, where the main thoroughfare is named “Sofia Street.” Many ancestors of local residents fled to this area of Ukraine during the 19th Century in the face of a Turkish invasion. Here, Elena models a traditional Bulgarian costumes before singing traditional songs whose melodies resonate across national boundaries. Along with other teachers and the director of the school, she shared a traditional Bulgarian cake called a banitsa, made of layers of soft cheese and pastry dough, with a little bit of sweetness. The cake is often baked for weddings and other special occasions.
Igor is an astrophysicist who joins fellow Mykolaiv residents in reenacting their Cossack heritage through traditional clothing, artifacts, sword fighting, and rifle practice. During a recent reenactment, Igor joined two friends as they meticulously dressed in Cossack garb and fought each other with handmade swords. Then they stuffed gunpowder into their traditional rifles, lit long wicks, blew on the them repeatedly, and abruptly fired the rifles, creating a burst of thick smoke and a tremendous thunderclap that threatened spectators with hearing loss. Here, Igor displays the handmade buttons on his Cossack uniform as objects of great importance to his heritage.
Germans were incredibly important to Mykolaiv’s history, playing an essential role in the creation of a commercial port and in developing agriculture. But just prior to World War II, the German minority was persecuted because of their perceived connection to Hitler’s rise. Here, Angelina Shardt, a German resident of Mykolaiv, holds a letter from her grandfather, who was exiled to Siberia. His wife traveled long distances alone to visit him in prison. At first she was denied any access, but a guard took pity on her and arranged a meeting. Tragically, his wife hardly recognized him because he had been subjected to electric shock. Despite appeals directly to Stalin, he died in prison. His rehabilitation in 1947 did little to ease the family’s pain.
Although there is not a true Japanese community in Mykolaiv, there is a Japan Center and many residents who feel a strong connection to Japanese culture. Its leader is the indomitable Galina Zinovyeva, whose grandfather fought in the Russian-Japanese War (1904-5). Following the war, Galina’s grandfather was enthralled with Japanese culture and returned there and married a Japanese woman. Today, the Japan Center, located at Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, serves those with a continued fascination with this East Asian nation and those who wish to learn Japanese. As an object of great importance, Galina shares a photograph of her grandfather that was taken in Japan.
Ludmila is the leader of the Korean community in Mykolaiv, most of whom emigrated to Ukraine to take agricultural jobs during the Soviet Union. She often felt like she had no home, since she could not return to South Korea following the end of the Korean war. At that time, Koreans were made fun of, in part because of their role in manual labor, and she set out to become the best in her school in all subjects. Now, she assists Koreans in becoming legal residents of Ukraine, but some have decided to return to Korea because jobs are now very difficult to find. Ludmilla shared a painting she created recently that symbolizes the longing for youth and for a distant home.
Bakhtyar Gyulsanamli-Bey is a member of the Mykolaiv Muslim community who emigrated from Azerbaijan. He is portrayed in the Muslim prayer house, where he worships and has a strong rapport with young Muslims, including Ukrainian converts. Bakhtyar is also a language teacher, and as treasured objects, he shares the books he has written in Azerbaijani and Turkish on the Muslim faith and on his family history from ancient times.
Some of Mykolaiv’s ethnic communities face existential dilemmas. There are very few Karaites remaining in the city, and the remaining ones have come to accept the fact that they may be among the last generation, not only in Mykolaiv, but around the world. Rather than bemoan their fate, they ease their loss through ample use of humor, making fun of each other and breaking into laughter frequently. Here, Tatyana Sapak wears traditional Karaite garments, including a lovely embroidered hat, to celebrate her roots.
Sultan Murat Kaimarazov, originally from the Dagestan Republic in Russia, helped create the Council of National Societies of the Mykolaiv Region, a local non-governmental organization specifically devoted to celebrating ethnic diversity, supporting the interests of national communities, and teaching tolerance. When no one else offered to take the helm, he headed the organization for many years and only recently turned it over to his daughter to continue advocacy for their interests -- and for peaceful coexistence in this region. Here, Sultan-Murad displays the medals he earned for his work on projects designed to bring the communities together.
Ilya Zielinski is a veteran of the war in the East, having fought in the Buszky Gard brigade of the Azov Battalion. Now returned from the front, he and many of his fellow veterans are also enthusiastic members of a coalition to protect Buszky Gard National Park, approximately 130 kilometers north of Mykolaiv. The park is threatened by a proposal to raise water levels behind Alexandrivsky Dam to provide more cooling water to the aging nuclear reactors at Yuzhnoukrainsk. The resulting flooding will threaten endangered plants and animals, cover important archaeological sites, and harm tourism and recreation. Most importantly to Ilya, the plan will mostly submerge Gardovy Island, a sacred place that used to be the site of a Cossack church. Ilya has pledged to defend Gardovy Island “by all means necessary, including radical ones.”
Even though Yazidis speak the same language as Kurds, their religion is not Islamic and has often been misinterpreted by Muslims as a form of Satan worship. Right now, in northern Iraq, Yazidis are suffering from a genocide at the hands of ISIS that includes the brutal rape and enslavement of women. According to Andrey Ankossi, a Yazidi living in Mykolaiv, Yazidis have endured as many as 73 genocides in their history. His own family fled in 1915 from Armenia to Turkey, Georgia and later to Mykolaiv, seeking a safe place to practice their religion, which is dwindling in numbers. Now an accomplished aircraft design engineer, winemaker, painter and the director of an education and cultural center for national communities in Nova Odessa, Andrey speaks passionately about the need for all people to preserve their cultural heritage.
Vladimir Bakhtov and Tetyana Bakhtova are innovative and accomplished Ukrainian artists whose practices include painting, etching, performance, photography, and film. They work on a wide range of responses to the ancient history of the region, especially focusing on the Greek city of Olvia, about 40 kilometers south of Mykolaiv. The city, active from about the 7th century to the 4th century BCE, is partially submerged in the estuary of the Southern Bug and Dnieper Rivers, but many ruins remain. The couple’s efforts to keep this important history alive is the subject of an art film that recently premiered in Kyiv and Mykolaiv. Here the window of the couple’s studio reflects the trees in the Olvia landscape.
Hussein is part of the diverse Muslim community in Mykolaiv, numbering as many as 15,000 residents. In sharp contrast to most other communities, Muslims in Mykolaiv complain of overt discrimination in employment and education, even in the post-Soviet era. Although there used to be several mosques in the city, none remain, and devoted Muslims crowd into a small prayer house that doesn’t accommodate their needs. The community has appealed for a new location for a mosque, but the city has not responded. Here, Hussein steps into the minaret of the most prominent former mosque, which lies in ruins, and says a modest prayer with his hands outstretched.
Mikhail Goldenberg is the leader of the Jewish community in Mykolaiv, a community which was massacred in large numbers during World War II and then depleted again following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many Jews emigrated to Israel. Now he runs the local Jewish Community Center and struggles to provide adequate services as financial support dwindles. He predicts that Jewish centers in smaller cities like Mykolaiv will disappear in the next ten years, with services available only in larger cities like Odessa. Like most Jews in Mykolaiv, he treasures his relationship with Israel, and he shared a certificate he received after attending an important meeting of the Jewish diaspora sponsored by the Israeli prime minister in 1993.
Zemfira is a highly-skilled creator of Bulgarian textiles and traditional clothing, including the dress she shared with us an emblem of her heritage. Although Bulgarians were castigated for using their own language during the late Soviet era, they now feel free to be open about all aspects of their culture. During a community celebration in the Ternovka neighborhood of Mykolaiv, where the main thoroughfare is called “Sofia Street,” the vivacious Zemfira danced in a circle with children and other young people.
Vladimir Bakhtov and Tetyana Bakhtova are innovative and accomplished Ukrainian artists whose practices include painting, etching, performance, photography, and film. They work on a wide range of responses to the ancient history of the region, especially focusing on the Greek city of Olvia, about 40 kilometers south of Mykolaiv. The city, active from about the 7th century to the 4th century BCE, is partially submerged in the estuary of the Southern Bug and Dnieper Rivers, but many ruins remain. The couple’s efforts to keep this important history alive is the subject of an art film that recently premiered in Kyiv and Mykolaiv. Here Tetyana holds one of the many dolls she has created as part of her diverse artwork.
Valeriy Ekhvaya teaches the ancient and unique Georgian language to Sunday school students at the Mykolaiv College of Culture and Arts. Many Georgians arrived in Mykolaiv after conflict erupted in the Abkhazia region following the Soviet era. Tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were killed and as many as 250,000 were forced to flee, some to Southern Ukraine. Now these local residents are fighting to preserve their language -- and their culture. In a dance studio downstairs, traditional Georgian dance was performed by beaming young people. The evening ended with numerous toasts about the importance of friendship among different peoples, and with the ceremonial drinking of wine from handmade, horn-shaped flasks, which have a unique construction: they cannot be put down until they are empty!
One of the least reported stories of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the dispersal of close to 5 million Iraqis displaced either internally or forced to flee across the country’s borders. This exile is one of the greatest refugee crises in modern history—the statistical equivalent of nearly 50 million Americans leaving the United States. These masses of people displaced by the war in Iraq have become invisible and insignificant, overshadowed by other war-related events. Many of the displaced were the brains, the talent, the pride, the future of Iraq. Many of them, stigmatized by unforgettable violence, will never return to their homes.
Some of the most recent Iraqi refugees in America had signed up to serve as translators working for the U.S. military or as experts with other U.S. government agencies, NGOs, or American companies in Iraq. They saved lives; they built cultural and linguistic bridges; they sacrificed their own safety and the safety of their families to help participate in what they thought would be the creation of a better Iraq. They quickly became one of the most hunted groups in the country. They bore a lethal stigma as “collaborators” or “traitors” that transcended sect or tribe, and they were targeted in assassination campaigns that drove many of them either into hiding or out of the country.
For people who fear for their life and seek refugee status in America, the U.S. government offers resettlement as the “option of last resort” for the most vulnerable refugees. In this project, I photographed and interviewed Iraqi refugees who have been resettled to the United States and are living in Washington, D.C. or other American cities.
Once in the United States, these refugees encounter the intricate, challenging, and often disillusioning process of transitioning to life in America. Many feel abandoned by the country they helped and risked their lives for; many are unemployed and facing dire financial crises; many yearn for the embrace of family and friends left behind; and many wish they could return home. Still fearful for their own safety and the safety of family members in Iraq, many refugees asked that I not reveal their faces or names.
“Yesterday, I was shouting during my sleep. I woke up suddenly, my dream was really scary, it was about Iraq. If you live as a refugee or anyone who was suffering inside Iraq, you would feel this pain living inside you, making you really suffering; struggling for survival.”
One of the least reported stories of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the dispersal of close to 5 million Iraqis displaced either internally or forced to flee across the country’s borders. This exile is one of the greatest refugee crises in modern history. These masses of people displaced by the war in Iraq have become invisible and insignificant, overshadowed by other war-related events. Many of the displaced were the brains, the talent, the pride, the future of Iraq. Many of them, stigmatized by unforgettable violence, will never return to their homes.
Amongst the displaced is a group of Iraqis who were forced from their homes because they had helped the United States. They signed up to serve as translators working for the U.S. military or as experts with other U.S. government agencies, NGOs, or American companies in Iraq. They saved lives; they built cultural and linguistic bridges; they sacrificed their own safety and the safety of their families to help participate in what they thought would be the creation of a better Iraq. They quickly became one of the most hunted groups in the country. They bore a lethal stigma as “collaborators” or “traitors” that transcended sect or tribe, and they were targeted in assassination campaigns that drove many of them either into hiding or out of the country.
“The threat came in 2006. I got the envelope with a bullet in it and a message: “Leave your house, leave your town, or death is coming to you.” They gave me just 24 hours to leave…and I left. I received the threat because I was working with the United States Marine Corps.”
For people who fear for their life and seek refugee in the U.S., the government offers resettlement as the “option of last resort”. I photographed Iraqis who have been resettled and are living in Washington, D.C. Once here, these refugees often feel abandoned by the country they risked their lives for; many are unemployed and facing dire financial crises; many wish they could return home. Still fearful for their own safety and the safety of family members in Iraq, many asked that I not reveal their faces or names.
As the U.S. cuts back its military presence in Iraq, the plight of Iraqis who helped the United States is uncertain and deeply troubling. Currently, there is no scenario for aiding or airlifting all those Iraqis and their families, thus putting them at great risk of being targeted as soon as the U.S. Army withdraws.
The historical, cultural, political and religious depth of this ancient Persian culture paralleled with its 21st century technological emancipation and its religious fundamentalism, create dualities expressed in every-day-life contradictions. The multi-faceted and intricate layers of life in Iran require much time spent inside of the society in order to observe, understand and then photograph the nuances of daily minutiae as portrayed in the life of individuals. These enthralling dichotomies create captivating fascination, albeit bordering on semi-blinding false romanticism.
Iran is just like a story…poetically narrated with its past profoundly present in its future, illustrated in vividly saturated colors alongside complex black-hued agendas, political propaganda, religious fundamentalism and imprisonment of non-conformist thoughts.
Iran is a contradiction…its society living a double life– religious and secular, traditionally Iranian yet with consumerist attraction to Western life-style, fundamentally rigid yet also reformist, highly emancipated and educated. It’s a life of family privacy and openness, and a life of sophisticated blending into the masses of obedient followers. It’s a country of deeply respected customs and rules where clerical conservatism battles modernism and where ‘westernization’ is an outlawed term.
It’s a country of large economic discrepancies and highly revered family ties; with university-educated housewives, with women scared to be photographed, yet also with women who with fashionably colorful scarves worn inched backward and short-cut manteaus closely outlining their bosoms and hips are leading an uncoordinated but highly visible and effective revolution.
Can’t see it, can’t smell it, can’t taste it, can’t talk about it. The Chernobyl exclusion zone – initially set at 20 miles in radius, but expanding over time with the spread of radioactivity by wind and water – splits towns and villages in half: half hospitable and living, half lethal and uninhabitable, as if the radioactive contamination stops at some arbitrary line. What is life like in those settlements on the edge of one of the most radioactive areas in the world?
“As other tragedies are vying for the world’s attention, Chernobyl has been relegated to history. The images of Chernobyl are different than the deeply disturbing images of war where the immediacy of bombs and bullets are all too apparent. The war that has been waged by Chernobyl is a silent and invisible war, but nonetheless, deadly.” Adi Roche, Founder and CEO of Ireland-based Chernobyl Children’s Project International.
World dictionaries define Chernobyl as the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity. But what does the ‘worst environmental catastrophe’ actually mean in the everyday lives of the people of Ukraine and Belarus, cannot be explained by any dictionary.
The complexity of living with Chernobyl can only be understood empirically though breathing Chernobyl, eating Chernobyl, sleeping with Chernobyl, and most of all, through denying Chernobyl.
An excruciating war waged by Chernobyl’s ‘atoms for peace gone wrong’ has been emitting its long lasting poisonous legacy for almost 25 years, but will continue to do so for centuries into the future. According to the UN, 7 to 9 million people were affected. 4.5 million children and adults live on contaminated land. Over 800,000 children are at risk of cancer. 400,000 people became environmental refugees.
A single refugee is a tragedy; over four million refugees is a statistic…
Iraqis have been fleeing their homes en masse. As displaced victims of war are forced to seek refuge in other parts of Iraq or in neighboring nations, they have turned into a number: 4.9 million un-named, anonymous non-entities, statistically relevant yet individually insignificant.[1]
The days of my stay in Syria offered a small window into the magnitude of a catastrophe that is still unfolding and shows no sign of abating in any immediately imaginable future.
Who are these fleeing Iraqis? Can they be turned from statistics into individual human beings?
At a first glance, Sayyida Zainab doesn’t seem much different from any other bustling, poor Damascus neighborhood, until one listens carefully: the Iraqi dialect spoken here transports one from Syria to Baghdad.
This is where Iraqi refugees come to escape war and sectarian violence -- temporarily, until they can return to their homes again. But if you ask them how long that may take, the uncertainty is immediately apparent in their gaze and in their repeated phrase, “Iraq’s future is like a long dark tunnel.”
Here, far away from their homeland, desperate, almost penniless Iraqi refugees congregate on “Iraqi Street,” a road that serves simultaneously as a community center, a market, and an access to nearby living quarters. As one passes the tea sellers and other merchants who are the nerve center of the neighborhood, one can start to imagine what life used to be like in Iraq…before.
In many ways, Sayyida Zainab represents the ideal concept of Iraq, an enclave where sectarian divisions are a foreign concept, a religiously and politically unified community. It is a sensitive topic, one often addressed in hushed tones, but many refugees assert: “We are Iraqis! We don’t refer to ourselves as Sunni or Shiia, we are all Iraqis here!”
“Baghdad…Baghdad,” yells a man on Iraqi Street, attracting the attention of potential travelers. Many Iraqis are lured by the appearance of a reduction in violence in Iraq; by a monetary incentive offered by the Iraqi government (a Faustian deal for which they have to turn in their passports and remain inside Iraq for five years); by the thought of escaping the desperation, humiliation and poverty they witness every day as refugees. Some respond to the call and board buses and cars, not knowing the precise circumstances they will find on the other side of the border. Others still fear for their lives and stay.
Damascus is home to over two million once proud Iraqis, now living as “guests” in Syria, without official recognition as refugees. These “guests” have extremely limited prospects – they are without the ability to earn a legal income or create new lives.
Which desperate story to mention? Which door to an unheated room to open first? These photographs are intended to puncture the statistics and reveal human beings.
[1]The United Nation High Commission on Refugees estimates that up to 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country, with most settling in neighboring Syria and Jordan. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 2.4 million others -- nearly 9 percent of Iraq’s population -- have become “internally displaced refugees,” abandoning their homes.
