I would say, of this photo, that it is beautiful, very beautiful, but I would say it were it not that it is the thirtieth in the daily sequence of images that come from war zones. I would say it if I hadn’t learned, day after day, photo after photo, not to be confused by “beauty”, to look for a narrative gap that is not slippery aesthetic. So, if I look at this human figure against the backdrop of the ruins of Mariupol, I try to override his aesthetic strength and wonder about the bewildered expression of the boy with his rusty trolley and yellow plastic bag.
How do you get around in a devastated city? How do you horizons where nothing is more recognizable? The buildings reduced to skeletons, the streets covered with dust and debris. Mariupol is no longer Mariupol, and it will no longer be. Moving in the daylight of the truce must be like advancing in the dark, groping, walking uncertainly in the no-more. A satellite navigator (I tried) still offers the intact map, the network of roads, the green of the parks, the indication of the hotels. But it is an expired card, a design that is no longer valid – obliterated topography, like the cast of an invisible city. And already regrets.