Territory

Since 2014, Rafael has been documenting the situation in Ukraine and the multiple facets of his society : the revolution in Kiev, the referendum in Crimea, the war in Donbass. Today, mixing several forms of writing and formats, he is dedicates to the creation of documentary projects in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and in the Middle East. In October 2020, he was injured by a bombing with his colleague from the newspaperLe Monde, during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Territory is the second part of his editorial project on Ukraine. Through this book Rafael assumes to distance himself from the documentary to dive elsewhere. By choosing the negative, the rift it opens is spatiotemporal. Electric cables cut shards of carbon sky. Planted in dark snow or white mud : bare poles, destroyed huts, statues of Lenin. As for human beings, they are faceless. As captured in thermal vision, they appear highlighted, reduced to their target condition. To think negatively is to consider absence. Color photography is the domain of humanity and of suffering ; black and white that of history and tragedy.