Memory and Time in Oles Ilchenko’s Photopoetry

The paper considers new creative approaches to the established types of poetry. Building on the theoretical definitions, taxonomies and observations formulated in the works of Aleida Assmann, Roland Barthes, Nina Chamata, Robert Crawford and Norman McBeath, Michael Nott, Irina Rajewski, James Smith, Susan Sontag, et al., the research argues that the artistic practices of photopoetry (“a form of photo-text that takes, for its primary components, poetry and photography”, Michael Nott) offer new ways to interpret certain topics of metaphysical poetry. The material for analysis is taken from a black and white photo-text book “Some Dreams or Kyiv That No Longer Exists” (2007) by a Geneva-based Ukrainian poet and artist Oles Ilchenko. The detailed analysis of it seeks to clarify the structural, stylistic, and semantic characteristics of Ilchenko’s photopoetry. The special attention is paid to the mechanics of cyclization, forms of intermedial interactions, and types of artistic collaboration in this project. It is also noted that the interpretative co-operation with the audience here depends on the readers/viewers’ personal memories and emotions evoked by these photographs and poems. Focusing on the motifs of memory, nostalgia, and transience of life, Ilchenko’s photopoetic cycle explores the metaphysical theme of Death and Time in its connection with the urban space of Kyiv. This project demonstrates that the long form photopoetry provides the 21st century author with some efficient creative instruments to interpret the realities “of peculiar kind” (James Smith), such as time and memory. The contrasting combination of verbal and visual elements in this book creates an effect of double visualization, which accentuates the dynamics and dramatic tension between the poems and the images. The cyclic composition of texts paired with the fragmented and modified photographs transforms the real urban space into a powerful metaphor of memory and personal loss.