Radiations of war, Yana Kononova

In Kononova’s terms, war does not end when the noise of explosions fades. It lingers, saturating the land and embedding itself in the silence of devastated landscapes. The Radiations of War project traces this persistence through Ukraine—not as a documentary record, but as an encounter with a terrain where disaster continues after impact, turning the land into both witness and archive. When the frontline recedes, the ruins left behind reflect a landscape in transformation, charged with that which has passed through it. Kononova’s images are evidence of this process, revealing how violence settles into the earth—lingering in the weight of absence.

For the artist, the term ‘radiations’ evokes the composite, polluted nature of how war is experienced. It evokes more than the eye perceives: a hum or a tremor that alters our sense of space, that moves through memory, through the body, beyond the body, across generations. Here, war is neither an event nor a singular catastrophe but a process without end, radiating outward and rippling across the land.

Yana Kononova began working on the Radiations of War series in March 2022. She has since stayed and worked in areas formerly occupied by Russian troops, territories affected by active combat or locations that have endured the terror of missile strikes. Employing a medium format camera, Kononova’s work documents war crimes, destroyed civilian infrastructure, the efforts of Ukrainian emergency services, and the bodies of both fallen soldiers and civilian victims.