City in the Suitcase: Saved (Family) Archives. Project Results

During Russia's full-scale invasion, many cities and rural areas suffered great destruction. The cities of the east and south became special symbols of the brutality of the war, but also of resilience and resistance. Urban development - the material heritage - was nearly wiped out. However, the residents of the cities who managed to escape are still the sources of the living memory of their cities. Some managed to take their family photo albums with them, some took photos on their phones, and others recreate fragments of their former lives using their social media photos. These photos are a window into the past and a connection between people: family members, and members of the city community. Sometimes, the photos are the only memory of people who became victims of the war. And sometimes, they can also become the basis for postwar urban planning and reconstruction.

In 2023, the Center for Urban History and the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore launched an initiative to collect family photo archives to preserve and study the history of cities that suffered urban violence: Siverskodonetsk, Mariupol, and Bakhmut. Family photographs in this project have become an important source of information about the past, telling unique stories, reflecting traditions, rituals, and everyday life of a particular time and place.

For the project team, it was valuable to collect and preserve various subjects in the photographs: family holidays, work and school days, neighborhood views, nature in cities, important buildings and homes, childhood, and many others. All the collected and processed photographs were archived and made available on the website of the Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History for further use by researchers, artists, and interested parties. 

Over the course of two years, the geography of family, private, and professional archives has expanded to include Siverskodonetsk, Mariupol, Bakhmut, Lyman, Chystiakove, Donetsk, Sloviansk, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Druzhkivka, and the village of Izhivka in Donetsk Oblast.

Digitized collections of the owners:

• Arif Bahirov, cityscapes, architectural objects, contemporary art of Siverskodonetsk, 2017-2022; destruction of the city in March-April 2022;
• Anzhela Bilodid, cityscapes, events in the urban space of Mariupol, 2016-2021;
• Lina Drobotova, Mariupol, 2020-2022;
• Yelisaveta Honcharova, Bakhmut, 2012-2014 (author's photos) and 1949-1995 (family photos);
• Serhii Horielov, rock music in Siverskodonetsk and the region, 1996-2022;
• Valentyna Kaleniuk (Serhii Kaleniuk), cultural and social life of Siverskodonetsk, 1976-2010;
• Taras Koval, family photos from Bakhmut and Chystiakove, early 20th century – 2003; 
• Mykola Kucheruk, resilience of an Internet provider in Kramatorsk during the war, 2022-2025;
• Oleksandr Kuchynskyi, cityscapes, alternative places, street art of Siverskodonetsk, 2014-2022; 
• Liudmyla Kushnir, family photos, Lyman, Donetsk, Sloviansk, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia; other half of the 1940s - late 1980s. ;
• Oleh Nevenytsia, pro-Russian riots in Siverskodonetsk in 2014; 
• Yevhen Fialko, family and professional photos, cultural and social life of Druzhkivka, 1930-2010; 
• Oleksa Tykhyi, (Yevhen Fialko's collection), photos, letters, documents of the Soviet dissident and human rights activist from Donetsk region, 1950-1970; 
• Lidiya Chala, Mariupol, 1950s-1970s.

Project team:

• Kateryna Filonova, guest researcher, compiler of materials, interviewer;
• Dr. Iryna Sklokina, historian, researcher at the Center for Urban History;
• Anastasiia Kholyavka, head of the Urban Media Archive at the Center for Urban History;
• Lilia Ryabinina, archivist, assistant at the Urban Media Archive at the Center for Urban History.

Organizers: Center for Urban History and Mariupol Museum of Local Lore in cooperation with the University of St. Andrews and the National University "Ostroh Academy."

This project is made possible by a grant from Research England, implemented by the International Organization of Universities in the United Kingdom.

Credits

Cover Image: from the collection Valentyna Kaleniuk (Serhii Kaleniuk), Siverskodonetsk / Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History