“The war on glass” at the camera museum in Vevey VD
Published: Thursday, May 23rd 2024, 19:10
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As a Swiss premiere, the Swiss Camera Museum in Vevey VD is showing works by photographer Edward Kaprov until August 18. He traveled to Ukraine in 2022 and captured the war on glass plates, a special approach that requires slowness.
Edward Kaprov's approach is "unique and breathtaking", the museum wrote on Thursday. Kaprov used the historic technique of glass plate photography, which requires the laboratory and the fragile plates to be carried around on site.
For the photographs, he traveled through the Donbass and photographed soldiers and civilians on the front line. The photographer used a van full of equipment and a large glass plate camera.
It took 15 minutes to prepare for the shoot. In contrast to fast, direct war photography, this method requires slowness, distance and direct contact with the people photographed. Kaprov cites his stance against the war as the motivation for his approach.
He also makes a historical connection. British photographer Roger Fenton set off for the Crimea in 1855 to document the war there for the first time using the new technology of the time. Kaprov thus follows in the footsteps of one of the very first war photographers and essentially tells the same story as his predecessors: of the horror of war despite the changing times.
"I have tried to juxtapose the past and the present. I deliberately try to confuse the viewer so that they take a closer look," he explained.
Edward Kaprov was born in the former Soviet Union in 1975 before emigrating to Israel in the early 1990s. He has worked as a freelance photographer for publications including "National Geographic", "Geo" and "El País".
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