In metalwork, annealing is what saves a material that has been through fire. Heated and then let cool slowly, it releases the tension locked inside it and stops being brittle. It does not become harder. It becomes able to hold.
A body that has been through war carries that same hidden tension. This series follows a woman learning to release it, to stop breaking at the touch of her own wounds, to become stronger not on the surface but at the core. The scars stay. The fear of them goes. Her name is Yana Zalevska, called "Multik", famous is a Ukrainian unit commander, hardly injured after on of the russian shelling. When I've sent first few images and ideas of the project to the Yana, she answered within minutes:
Looking at these photographs, for the first time in a long while I truly see my path. I see it in the eyes, not from the outside but from within.
When I was caught in the blast and saw myself for the first time after, the pain had no words, and it was not only physical. You look at yourself and you do not know whether any of it can be undone. You think of skin grafts, of surgeries, of whether you will ever feel beautiful again, feel like yourself.
Then the long recovery begins, surgery after surgery, step after step, and each time you remind yourself that you are strong, that there are people worth fighting for, a life worth living. At some point the mark you hold on to grows into you until it is simply part of who you are.
In these photographs I do not see aggression, and I do not see pain as the main character. I see character. I see a path. I see a woman who went through a great deal and did not lose herself, a woman slowly becoming art, not because the pain is beautiful but because she found the strength to live through it
It is for everyone afraid that what happened has left them broken for good. Like the metal, you do not come out of the fire harder, you come out able to hold yourself.
