The Ukrainian photographer Stanislaw Ostrous, a man of military age, was only able to travel to the opening of his show "Charkiv Requiem" in the base windows of the TU Berlin on Ernst-Reuter-Platz thanks to a special permit.

The 49-year-old Ostrous has been teaching conceptual art photography at the Kharkiv Academy of Culture for the past year, but since the start of the Russian war of aggression against his country he has mainly been making documentary and press photos.

The window squares of the gridded facade open up insights into the terrible world of war through individual image fragments or through enlarged sections across several windows.

The digital photos, some of which are in colour, but mostly from black-and-white film, were taken between mid-March and mid-April of this year.

Kerstin Holm

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The window picture fragments show shot-up cars and buildings, from some frozen streams of water hang down like surreal stalactites, pouring out of burst pipes.

Some of the damage is revealed at second glance: Since many houses no longer have windows as a result of the blast waves from the projectile, a mannequin stands unprotected in the open shop.

There was practically no looting, Ostrous reports, not even in jewelry stores, and law enforcement officers strictly followed it up.

Only a few kiosks were broken into by petty criminals.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, was the state capital in the early Soviet Union, the center of a modernism of its own, and was rebuilt after the devastation of World War II.

Now the town, not far from the Russian border, from which many residents have fled, is once again being destroyed by Russian artillery, as Ostrous documents.

Since March 10, when bombs fell in the city center, he roamed the deserted streets, photographed the city's fresh wounds, explored ruins and, during air raid alarms, took refuge in basement offices which, he testifies, were left unlocked for that reason.

Ostrous, who continues to teach, doesn't want to leave Kharkiv, even though people die there almost every day, but wants to continue his tragic photo chronicle.

His partner Anna, who also takes photographs, has meanwhile accepted an artist grant in Germany.

After the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Ostrous, who comes from Donbass, first moved to Cherson, which is now Russian-occupied, before coming to Kharkiv.

His once-pro-Russian sister, who went to Volgograd, Russia, in 2014, is now appalled by Putin, he testifies.

He knows practically nothing about his friends who stayed in Cherson, the messenger connections hardly work anymore.

Ostrous says war-torn Kharkiv always comes back to life when the shelling subsides.

The photographer admires the employees of the municipal services, who cleared mountains of rubble and repaired pipes in just a few days.

Wrecked cars are reused in roadblocks, says Ostrous, proving it with a picture on his cell phone.

Instead of glass windows, many houses today have wooden shacks.

The photographer most admires the Ukrainian military, who often checked him, as well as his phone.

But he understands that they fought with the last of their strength.

He feels all the more that the West, especially Germany, is at best prepared to avert the collapse of the Ukrainian troops, but not to supply Ukraine with the heavy weapons that would be necessary to fight back Russia's slowly but inexorably advancing artillery.

Ostrous may have returned to Kharkiv via Poland in the meantime.

His photos, curated by the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin, can be seen until August 21st.