"Culture won't stop the war, but art makes us human" - Anna Holubovska about photos of military Odesa

Anna Holubovska, the only Ukrainian photographer from Odesa, is presenting her work at the Italian art photography exhibition MIA Photo Fair, where hundreds of galleries around the world show what they consider to be the most important. Intent talked to Anna about how she sees military Odesa, why she stopped working on a book about Odesa photography, closed the Liberty Gallery, and what is wrong with the Odesa myth.

Anna Holubovska was born in 1969. She graduated from the Odesa Theater and Art School and the Odesa Civil Engineering Institute. She worked in an architectural bureau. In 1993, she founded and managed the Liberty Gallery in Odesa until 2009. At the same time, Golubovska was engaged in design, in particular, the design of book publications, many of which received various awards at book competitions and fairs.

In the early 2000s, she became interested in artistic photography, and gradually photography became her main occupation. Anna Golubovska shoots with black and white film and prefers traditional photo printing. Her works have been exhibited at the Rencontres Musicales Internationales de Graves in Bordeaux (2008) and at the Odesa National Art Museum (2013).

Golubovska has taught online courses in art history and photography, and has published numerous essays on photography. Recently, together with the photographer Oleksandr Yakymchuk, she worked on the opening of the archive of Vikentiy Kugel, a photographer who worked in Odesa in the early 20th century.

In 2022, her exhibition opened at the Museum of Western and Eastern Art "Close". Now Anna Holubovska is regularly represented by Galleria Paola Colombari in Milan, with whom she has been participating in the international exhibition Mia Photo Fair BNP Paribas since 2022. On May 8, 2025, her exhibition "Points of Attraction" opened at the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odesa.

How did it happen that the MIA Photo Fair 2025 featured a dialog, combining your photographs from the Tango City series with vintage portraits by Frida Kahlo?

Photo: Anna Holubovska's Facebook page

It all started long before this exhibition. In 2022, after the outbreak of a full-scale war, I received a call from my old friend, an Italian with Odesa roots, writer and cultural critic Eugenio Alberti Schatz. He offered me to do joint articles for the Italian online newspaper doppiozero.com about the life of military Odesa. I took photos and described what I saw and felt around me, day by day. And Eugenio wrote about his feelings. Two perspectives came together - from the inside and outside the situation.

Photo: Anna Golubovska

Our materials received a great response. We felt how many Italians supported Ukrainians.

Photo: Anna Holubovska's Facebook page

After eleven issues, in July 2022, the Stelline Foundation organized an exhibition in the center of Milan called "Qui Odesa - Chronicles of a city that holds its breath." These were quotes from our dialogues and videos, with the participation of the composer and videographer Steve Piccolo, with my photographs and short answers to the question of what is war, written by Eugenio. The question is: "What is war for you?", we wrote on blank pages and hung them on one of the walls so that visitors could also answer this question, and it became part of the exhibition. A lot of people came, and the experience was physically felt. Odesa, with its culture, music, and architecture, is very close to Italy.

Photo: Anna Golubovska's Facebook page

Photo: Anna Golubovska's Facebook page

At the opening, I spoke about Mykolaiv, which held off the enemy and became our armor. And that Ukraine is defending Europe in the same way. I'm not sure that my words were understood by everyone then. But now Europeans are well aware of how close the war is to them.

After the opening of the Stelline, an auction was held at which all my works were bought. I donated all the money, about 36 thousand euros.

Paola Colombari shows Anna Holubovska's work at the MIA Photo Fair

It was at this exhibition that we met the gallery owner Paola Colombari and started working with her.

What does it mean to work with a foreign gallery? Why do so few Ukrainian photographers experience this?

Our government agencies are somehow differently created. If it wasn't for the war, I wouldn't have worked with anyone either. I was just lucky.

Photo: Anna Holubovska

But this imposes a lot of obligations. At the MIA Photo Fair exhibitions, I, like other photographers, present photos only from a new series, there are some restrictions on where, apart from this gallery, I can exhibit, in general, a high bar is set.

Photo: Anna Golubovska

In 2022, I presented wartime photos from Odesa in 2023 fromthe Circus series. For six months I traveled with the tent circus to the regions of Ukraine and sometimes Moldova, in the heat and snow, and saw children for whom the circus is an unprecedented joy, and cotton candy is something extraordinary.

Circus groups without men - all at the front, or with old men. One of my photos is of a very nice man, a clown with Alzheimer's. He doesn't remember anything, but every day he goes to the arena to see the children. And while he is there, in the rays of the lamps, his memory comes back.

This year I showed the Tango City series. It has an unusual story. The series began not with a dance, but with that terrible morning when we were driven into the cathedral. At five in the morning, I went out to look and take pictures. The streets were glittering in the dawn sun - they were countless shards of windows. I imagined people dancing a tango, clearing the space of glass. It is believed that one square meter is enough for professionals. A meter without war.

Next year I'll present what I've filmed this year. I don't know what it will be yet.

Tell us about the exhibition in Odesa.

Photo: Anna Holubovska's Facebook page

I was hoping that the war would be over. Eugenio and I believed that we had started these three years together and that we would leave the war behind us... But nothing ended, the war went to the next stage.

Photo: Intent/Nata Chernetska

The Museum of Western and Oriental Art currently presents 78 works from 2022-2025 under the general title "Points of Attraction". Eugenio became the curator and divided the exhibition into blocks. In each of them, one photo is a landmark for us, and the others support it. But this does not mean that the audience has to follow us, and they can choose their own points.

Read and watch the report from the exhibition opening here.

In the nineties, Alexander Roitburd exhibited at your Liberty Gallery (1993-2009). Tell us about this period.

Yes, and it was his first solo exhibition. It was quite successful. We were very young, this gallery was one of the first private galleries in the post-Soviet space. And it was more about communication, exchange of ideas and creativity than business. I even sold one of Sasha's (although I still call him Shura in my mind) works in such a way that it helped him out for a long time. The buyer was the head of the tax office on Lanzheronivska Street. She came to the gallery for something she could invest in for the ages. I took her to the artist's studio. The work was bought, as I remember, for three thousand dollars. It was quite a good investment; today such a work costs tens of thousands.

I am not a businesswoman. So the gallery was a creative project. I worked all the time to feed it. I earned my rent by making books. I was embarrassed to take money from the authors, but we were friends, and if someone offered to donate a painting, I didn't refuse. But not usually. Roitburd, by the way, gave me a small graphic, which I passed on.

When it started, my connections with old collectors, artists who were friends with my parents, helped. They trusted me, and I was their own person. And I helped new collectors to put together decent collections of works. At that time, the gallery exhibited not only valuable, but the most valuable paintings. I spent a lot of time biting my elbows that I couldn't buy them myself. In 1993 and beyond, we lived very poorly, I lived in a communal apartment, and my salary was 10-20 dollars.

The gallery survived for 17 years. And to be honest, it had outlived its usefulness. In 2001, I started taking photos consciously. The gallery lasted until 2009. When it closed, I stayed in my old jeans and started my life over, from scratch. With a camera.

We gradually came to photography. How did it all start?

Photo: Anna Holubovska's Facebook page

I had a friend who was a photographer. I got a little carried away when my daughter was born and told him, "Show me where the shutter speed is?" And then it started. "What? You have to figure it out for yourself. These are professional secrets." I was not expecting this. I didn't understand what was so difficult, why this casteism? But later, when I realized that a photographer for society is most often the one who takes pictures at weddings, it became clear that these kinds of "pros" guard their secrets.

Then Mykhailo Zhvanetskyi wrote a book called Odesa Dachas and asked me to design it. Then I called another great photographer. We went with him to shoot the dachas that had not yet been destroyed. Not private houses, but dachas - the life of the land, without any gardens. Then he brought back what he had photographed. And I suddenly had a feeling that it was not right. We were standing right next to each other. I was showing him where I grew up. But he was taking pictures of something else-some beauty, a beautiful hat, flowers in a vase. I couldn't even tell him. Why would you offend a person? The book was published with those photos.

I remember that it nailed me. How can two people stand next to each other and look at different things? I was showing him everything that was dear to me-the rays of the last light playing on some old rags, small chairs, jars. And he didn't see it.

So I thought I should try. I bought a Nikon, three lenses, which I'm still loyal to, and went to the library. Everything turned out to be simple with the shutter speeds. Vitia Marushchenko developed the first films with me. In those years, he created a branch of his Kyiv school of photography on the basis of my gallery. We worked together in this way and he taught me how to develop film. I am self-taught. Everything is my own trial and error.

You are engaged in the history of photography, you are writing a book. What is it about?

Photography came to Odesa in 1842, even though it was invented in the world in 1839. That is, we overtook Moscow even in those years, where it appeared much later. Odesa has always been an advanced city.

Oleg Hubar thought that photography came to us later, in 1843. But I was sitting in our research library, reading old newspapers, and discovered that it was earlier, in '42.

And the person about whom I am writing and will never finish the book is Joseph Karl Migurski. His photographs are some of the oldest that show views of Odesa. In 1859 he wrote a textbook on photography that is still quite relevant today. It is written in a lively way. There are no outdated expressions, everything is clear and precise, and there are a lot of recipes.

But the war broke out, and my book went quiet. A lot of information is in the Russian archives. I don't want to use it. Therefore, I write based on what is scattered across Europe, even though evil is taking over. Why should these photographs belong to them? What do they have to do with him? He is an Odessan. He belongs to the whole world. And there is no mythology here - it is reality.

There is a lot of talk about the Odesa myth these days. What do you think about it?

Photo: Anna Golubovska

I don't know what the Odesa myth is, and I don't believe in myths at all. All my life I have been in contact with people who have been researching reality. My friend Oleh Hubar has spent his life filling in unknown puzzles, document by document, and exposing myths. I prefer information that I can confirm with a primary source, and mythology is where there is no primary source, where there are assumptions and fictions.

What saves and comforts you now?

Photo: Anna Holubovska

I never stop communicating with people. I work a lot. I read, think, and write a lot.

When I'm filming, I constantly come across people and stories of people who have it even harder than I do. All the time I am internally paying off debts for being lucky in some way. Although, perhaps, I just don't like to whine.

When the war started, I volunteered at a bakery. Then I filmed how they baked bread. I photographed women giving birth when the alarm sounded.
But I can't take pictures of people for money. I am free to make my own choices. I choose to love or not. Photography is an act of love.

Can culture stop the war?

Photo: Anna Holubovska

No, it can't. There is a myth that Odesa is the friendliest city. But 300 thousand Jews died in this city during the war.

A person who reads a book can be nasty. There are scoundrels who have read good books and manipulate knowledge. I won't say that it is better to be an uneducated person, but life is more complicated than we would like.

Photo: Anna Holubovska

But the soul develops under the influence of culture, we learn empathy, humanity, and kindness. A person who looks at the world in a subtle way must be unbearably downcast. If we rely on the memoirs of intellectuals who survived the camps, many did not sink, they kept their core, their inner dignity, thanks to the books they read.

War is an evil that humanity does not want to part with. It is a tool of control. Our war is not the only one in the world today, we see other people's wars escalating. And only after we have suffered do we begin to truly sympathize with others.

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