While I’ve loved reading since I was a little kid, I do it quite a bit less often in the past 15 years or so. And when I do, for the sake of convenience I tend to prefer digital versions – they don’t take up extra space, you can easily read them when you commute or take them with you on travels. But in recent years, especially as I grew more interested in more visually rich books and rekindled my love for photo books, I’ve been grabbing occasional physical copies. With the start of the full scale Russian genocidal invasion of Ukraine, I’ve felt additionally compelled to grab more books from Ukrainian publishers. Which led me to discover just how much high quality publishing is happening right now that I was completely missing, with a few of older and established and several promising up and coming publishers providing content that feels extremely satisfying to own physically. In this post I wanted to focus on some of the examples. I’m focusing on Ukraїner, a project focused on bringing photographic coverage of modern Ukrainian life, and the books they’ve published because I happened to get them all and liked the majority of them.
Now, uniquely for this post, a lot of the books I will talk about do not currently have English translations and due to that you might not be able to read them at the moment, unless you speak Ukrainian. That said, a big chunk of them is, some of them are more visual and additionally there might be a chance more will get translated in the future and you might be interested in checking them out when they do.
Ukrainian Insider – the first of currently two books focusing on modern up and coming Ukrainian businesses and hobbyists from different parts of the country. It’s full of beautiful pictures and this particular version is translated in English. It’s concise and mostly built out of the blog posts that Ukraїner were publishing up until the point of publishing. Very curious as a piece of modern history.
Країна зсередини 2 (Ukrainian Insider 2) – Second book in the series that continues from where the first book left off. It’s more of the same with more beautiful pictures. But also as a piece of modern history, since it was published after the start of the full scale invasion, it also has many editor notes updating on the status of people covered in the book. With lots of these small businesses closing due to the invasion. Has no English translation as of now.
Ukraine from above – a really beautiful photo book of different places in Ukraine. Due to its mostly photographic nature, it was published only in English.
Who We Are: Indigenous People and National Minorities of Ukraine – a book focused on ethnic and national minorities in Ukraine that didn’t seem to get the announced English release and has since disappeared in Ukrainian as well. While the goals of the project were noble and it does cover some very interesting facts about life and culture of different people living on the territory of Ukraine, I would say that the flow of the book is a bit rough. It’s a collection of photos and stories from real people representing the aforementioned cultures, which, due to this approach, leads to a very messy and confusing sequence of anecdotes and biographies that don’t really connect.
Різдво та Маланка (Christmas and Malanka). This book focuses on two winter holiday traditions – celebration of Christmas (that has some unique characteristics in Ukrainian culture) and Malanka (that remains unique to Eastern Europe). It’s also based on blog posts and videos that the project had done up to that point, but is nicely paced as a collection of reports in the format of the book. The stories are gathered from different parts of Ukraine, accompanied by beautiful pictures. And the book itself is divide right in the middle, with each of the holidays being published in a mirrored way, so you have to turn the book upside down (with both halves read from left to right). It’s a bit messy but quite interesting. Sadly, is not translated into English as of now.
Деокупація. Історії опору українців.2022 (Deoccupation. Ukrainian Resistance. 2022). This book is following several episodes in the life of Armed Forces of Ukraine during 2022 and reporting on the scenes of de-occupation of Ukrainian cities. Unlike most of the other projects by Ukraїner, this one is heavier on text that photography and due to that has a similar awkward and messy approach as Who We Are had. As a result, while I appreciate the stories that this book tells, it’s a hard read not just due to the topic it covers, but also due to how it’s written. Still a solid book due to the work its doing. Not available in English as of now.
Бахмут (Bakhmut). An immense improvement in war reporting to Deoccupation, despite remaining a very difficult topic to cover. This book covers the early months of 2023 and focuses on the defense of Bakhmut, shown through several mostly unrelated life stories all connected to said defense. Soldiers, firefighters, civilians, fellow reporters, captured invading Russians – slice of life events that flow wonderfully, as weird as it is to use this word when talking about war reporting. Photography still takes a back seat, but this book is extremely well paced and it’s worth reading. Especially now, that the city has been almost entirely destroyed by the invasion. Sadly, this is not available in English yet.
Нерозказана історія українського виноробства (Untold history of Ukrainian wine making). This book is quite well explained by its title. Despite historically being a place with strong wine culture, a lot of that culture and its history has been destroyed over the centuries. And this book covers the history and the modern day successful attempts to revitalize the winemaking in Ukraine. A lot of which is yet again being tested by constant destruction from the Russian invading forces. Even though I’m not that much into wine myself, I found the book very fascinating and the pictures accompanying it are often breathtaking. Doesn’t have an English translation as of now.
This would be it for the books published by Ukraїner as of now, although they’ve already announced a new war reporting book, this time seemingly focusing more on photography. And I will now write a bit about other books I wanted to mention.
Russian Colonialism 101 by Maksym Eristavi. An incredibly simple, yet potent book based on the twitter thread Maksym started writing on the verge of the Russian full scale invasion. This book chronicles all of the invasions and attempted invasions by Russia just in the past 100 years. And it’s presented in the same format – a page with a wonderfully chilling illustration on the left and a page of text describing the year, premise, Russian excuses for the invasion and other facts on the right. Which seems a bit too simple and academic at first, but then starts working emotionally as you see how every single invasion was done using the exact same format and excuses. It’s a simple, but a very good read. English version available and linked.
Готелі старого Львова (Hotels of the old Lviv) by Denys Mandziuk. A book I never considered I’d be interested in, but one that I loved reading. This book, as the title says, covers all of the currently known hotels that existed in Lviv since the mid 19th century, with some of them still existing today. It provides a short history of each hotel, lots of scanned documents, postcards, newspaper clippings, photographs from the time and a separate selection of photographs of how the buildings look today. And additionally each section of the book (some hotels get a section of their own, some get grouped) is followed by a chronicle of notable events, taken from the newspapers of the era. So you get really bizarre anecdotes, notes of important people visits, criminal records and lots of other things that you tend to get in a good detective novel, except these are real events from history. Sadly, this book is in Ukrainian only at the time.
Brave To Bring Light – a photo book about the winter of 2022-2023 when Russia was committed to destroying the Ukrainian energy system, leading to necessary but constant blackouts across the whole territory of Ukraine. Features lots of pictures of Ukrainian cities in complete darkness as people are trying to keep working and living their normal life and also the work of the firefighters and energy sector workers as they try to save and restore the destroyed machinery. Good collection of photos about a very difficult time that is in both English and Ukrainian. However, the choice of paper, which isn’t glossy, makes some of the photos look far more washed out, as there’s a lot of darkness and contrast in the content. Not sure why this choice was made, but it certainly makes a lot of pictures less striking than they would otherwise be.
And that last point has brought me to remember the book I’ve loved since I was a kid. One that I still look at as a benchmark of a beautiful photo book (and it is on glossy paper).
Київ і кияни (Kyiv and kyivans) by Mykola Kozlovsky. A book from 1979 that’s full of incredible photos of Kyiv from the time before I was born that I still find incredibly beautiful. Golden Gates are still an open monument in the middle of a park, some of the now densely populated districts are just being built. Some incredibly wonderful high contrast photography during the late evening or in a dark theater. This book, if you can find it anywhere, still looks incredible and shows a genuine passion and skill of the photographer behind each picture. One that I still expect to see in every photo book I see. Was published in Ukrainian and Russian (mostly Russian, I’m surprised Ukrainian on the cover was even allowed) but is mostly photos, so lack of English shouldn’t stop you.
And there we have it. A collection of quick thoughts on a number of books, most of which, I feel, are worth your attention if you can get them. Especially if they ever get translated.