VY: This is a very big and good question. And there is no response to this.

So in Ukraine we have a big debate. How far can literature go in talking about suffering of other people? How far can art go? I think there is no answer. How far can photography go? There is no answer to that.

Because if you don’t speak about that, that means all these things, all these horrible things or maybe beautiful things, go into oblivion. And this is what happened many times in Ukrainian history. But if we speak about that, if we relieve that, if we relieve suffering of other people, we are intruding in their lives, we are intruding in their privacy, in the intimacy of suffering or mourning, of d’oeil, as the French say.

So it’s always a question. And I think every artist will decide, and every journalist and every reporter needs to really decide on himself. And it’s a very, very, very difficult decision.

You evoke an afterlife of those who have lost everything. Is this a new existential condition?

VY: Yeah, I do think. It’s a concept that we borrow from a poetry of Yaryna Chornohus. And we apply this concept to the life of a man who lost seven members of his family after one airstrike in just one second.

And I think, indeed, many people in Ukraine, those who lost their beloved ones, those who lost their homes, those who lost part of their bodies, their health, we cannot describe their life in usual terms. And we cannot apply our usual concepts like happiness or pleasure or joy or comfort to them. They need to be addressed with a completely different set of concepts.

And only they can develop these........

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