Since 2016 Alena Grom’s work focuses on people and places affected by military aggression. Her lens captures victims of the war, migrants and refugees, and war-torn Ukraine in large. „Mavki. Camouflage“, her current project, shows real women, residents of the Ukrainian village of Gorenka, Buchansky District, who are her heros.
In March 2022, the village was on the front line and suffered from constant shelling. Thus, the women of Gorenka organized a volunteer group called «Gorenski Mavky». They come from different age groups, professions, and social backgrounds but share a common goal. These women are producing nets that imitate natural colors and «kikimori» — camouflage clothing for snipers and scouts, which makes the military invisible and saves lives. There is a constant need for such means, they go to the front as quickly as possible.
This project resonates with Andy Warhol’s famous project «Camouflage» (1986), where the contrast between the impersonality of camouflage and the bright individuality of the portrait was used. Camouflage as an abstract pattern offers a number of interpretations: from stealth to courage, from the beauty of an idyllic landscape to the nervous tension of a sniper. Such an allusion shows the heroines of the project in their vulnerability and at the same time as protectors and guardians, whose strength is nature itself.
Alena works at the junction of social reporting and conceptual photography. She works on her topics on the front line. She sees her “mission” in covering the lives of people who find themselves in a “gray zone” or a zone close to military action. With her photographs, she tries to inform the world community about the complexities of military everyday life, tragedy of war and faith in the world. Alena tells about the war through a subjective experience associated with cultural memory, through a creative reassessment of her own life, as a documentary evidence of events. However, her photographs are not illustrations of pity or grief. Life in spite of everything is one of the main themes of the artist.
Alena Grom’s projects have been on show in Ukraine, the USA, Australia, Europe and Asia. Her work has been honored with many international photography awards and prizes among them 2022 Tokyo International Foto Awards; Prix de la Photographie, Paris (PX3); International Photographer Of The Year USA 2018
Exhibitions (small selection)
2023 Sweden, Rikstolvan Gallery. ” It’s a Mad, Mad World “
2023 Stanford, Washington,Washington Gallery ” Women at War”
2023 Berlin, MOMENTUM, “You know that you are a person”
2023 Paris, Gallery Labo, ” VISIBLES MMXXIII “