A boy with a heavy look in the crowd in Kherson.

Nothing sentimental.

A cold, stubborn look from a child who has seen violence and suffering.

His age is strangely indefinable, and one already senses the man and the old man in him.

My children's fun-loving and energetic babysitter is also from this southern city.

The image is so strong that you can interpret anything into it.

Is this what a lost childhood looks like?

A hard face like in Elem Klimov's war film "Come and see" about the German exterminations in Belarus, which shook me in my childhood.

But this is not a feature film.

Who could have imagined that a torture chamber for children set up by the Russian army would be discovered in Kherson?

When Kherson was liberated in November, hundreds of images of people celebrating, crying, hugging each other and the soldiers flooded the internet.

It was the first major victory of the Ukrainian army, and four days later dozens of journalists went there.

Hungarian photographer András Hajdú photographed Zelenskyj on Freedom Square, then he looked into the crowd of enthusiastic faces and in between spotted the boy whom he made known as the “Kherson boy” through his photo and in which many Ukrainians express their own suffering and their own will recognized for resistance.

The photo went viral and even ended up in a tweet from the Department of Defense, which has more than a million followers.

In December, the Kiev art portal birdinflight.com voted this photo photo of the year.

About the ambivalence of photography

I look at it with a certain embarrassment and wonder what exactly you are seeing here.

First of all, I recognize a contradiction to the celebration.

Next to the boy is another, also looking very worried, and to his left is a man with an infant, who has a face as plump as the hero in the center.

I chose it and realize that I want to suppress the images of the ruins of Kharkiv, the battles in Soledar, endless burials and also the death of my classmate at Bakhmut.

Or do I secretly believe that this boy "sees" or embodies it all, like an Oskar Matzerath, and that just showing him is enough - and the whole war is included?

I see his bitterness and I wonder if one can see all of that in him without knowing his concrete history.

But that is precisely the ambivalence of photography, which condenses space and time, making the personal universal or even symbolic.

As a journalist and volunteer, Hajdú traveled to Ukraine five times in 2022.

I asked him what he thought about the boy and he said he hadn't spoken to him and that everyone on Freedom Square had their own story too.

The boy has become a star and has been interviewed by many TV crews.

His name is Hlib, he speaks a confused mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, he smiled and said that he wasn't as dirty and mean as in the picture.

During the occupation he attended school online, but after the liberation the Russian army destroyed the infrastructure and there is hardly any electricity and therefore no classes.

Once he was filmed with a group of teenagers.

You get a vague idea of ​​their life in a city that is constantly being shelled.

The war not only exposes the actual crime, but also exposes the old social wounds, exposing the neglected sections of the population.

I think of my friend Lena, who brings medicines to old people from Kyiv in Kherson, and of Lyonia, who evacuates museums in Kherson that were not looted by Russian soldiers, or rather their remains.

Somehow, people adjust more to moving life than to an ongoing but rigid tragedy.

They preserve and plan.