Capturing a 21st-century war with 19th-century technology

The news coverage from Ukraine has been so intense and widespread over the past 16 months that it may seem that the war has been covered to the point of saturation. Yet for all the wealth of film and photographs to come out of the war, there have been significant gaps — most notably, a shortage of combat photography.

That is not so much for lack of trying, but because of the difficulty of access to the front lines. Photographers are often restricted to press tours and kept well back from the zero line, as the first line is known. As a result, the most memorable photography emerging from the war has been the civilian aspect, urban destruction and the human cost.

A new photo exhibition by Israeli freelance photographer Edward Kaprov goes a significant way to remedy that and stands out for its timeless images of war at the front.

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Kaprov, 48, has turned to one of the earliest of photographic techniques, wet plate collodion photography, invented in 1851, to produce images — mostly portraits of soldiers, medics, morgue workers and a smattering of civilians — that his peers are describing as one of the most powerful collections of images of the war in Ukraine to date.

He happily points out that wet plate photography, which produces unique images on A4-size glass plates, is an absurdly complicated and cumbersome method in the digital age and in a war zone, but it is one he embraces for all kinds of personal and historical connections.

One of the earliest wars documented with photographs was the Crimean War, in the middle of the 19th century. British photographer Roger Fenton used the same wet plate technique to record the participants and the landscape of war, including a celebrated image, “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.” “I wanted to close a certain logical circle,” Kaprov said in an interview this week.

The first photographs that exist of the Holy Land are also from the same technique, he added.

Born and raised in the Soviet Union, Kaprov moved to Israel 30 years ago, where he embarked on a career in photography. Much of his work has focused on themes of his motherland, the Soviet Union, and the homeland, Israel, both of which he describes as shattered utopias.

He has used the wet plate technique for a seven-year project documenting life along the borders of Israel and found it an obvious choice to produce something distinctive in Ukraine.

“This technique is doing something else,” he said. “It’s how I can go deeper.”

He kitted out a Ford Transit van, turning it into a mobile laboratory and loading it with 300 kilograms of chemicals and water and more than 100 glass plates, driving it into Ukraine soon after the full-scale invasion by Russia last year.

He uses a box camera that he compares laughingly to an accordion “with all its bells and whistles.” The subject has to stand or sit stock-still in order for him to produce a sharp image, and the photographer has 10 to 15 minutes to develop the photograph before the emulsion on the glass plate dries.

Most of his subjects are soldiers or in units attached to the military. They are photographed not in action, as much modern war photography focuses on, but nevertheless at their positions, in their tanks and armored vehicles, in trenches or under the trees.

They are poised with a stillness that is a necessary part of the process to ensure a clear image with a lengthy exposure. The viewer is drawn in by the sharp clarity of the face of the subject, or the white of a cigarette or the glint of an eye, while the surrounds and even the companions are blurred in a timeless, otherworldly landscape. Some of the images are unforgettable: a morgue physician bent over a corpse looking at the camera, a soldier smoking in a trench, an old couple hugging in the ruins.

“When you look at them, the first impression is this was 100 years ago,” Kaprov said. On a closer look, it is clear the soldiers have modern weapons and equipment. “I want to confuse the audience,” he went on. “I want the act of comparing them with past wars, because in fact nothing has changed. Maybe the weapons and cellphones have changed, but the essence of war does not change.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, there was no question for Kaprov that he would travel there to report on the war, even if he had no assignment. He has worked alone, without editorial feedback or financial backup, working “like an obsessive,” as he described it himself.

“It was like war came to my house; it's my people,” he said. “Actually, it’s my people on both sides.”

His family history makes it deeply personal. His grandparents were from Zhytomyr in Ukraine, and he was born and raised in Chelyabinsk, in Russia. When he was born, it was all one country, the Soviet Union, but now the current leaders of his motherland, Russia, are attacking the land of his grandparents.

“The Ukrainians suffer the most, and what Russia is doing is not right,” he said. “But they are my family and friends also, and some politicians are trying to steal my motherland, taking the last that I have.”