Chasing the Deer Shadow
Analog photography, haiku / 2022

During the art residency in Ireland, I created a visual collection of poetic images, each of which accompanied by a haiku. It is a result of a healing connection to nature, exploration of deer mythology, and research on similarities between Irish and Ukrainian history.

After seeing the news about the injured female deer in the Kyiv region in spring 2022, I came to County Cork with the idea to make a project dedicated to deer mythology, in particular, its symbol of regeneration. I went to Killarney National Park to be able to take photographs of deer in their natural environment.

During my residency I was doing research on the Irish and Ukrainian historical contexts, and found some tragic parallels: there was the Great Irish Famine in 1845-49, and Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-33. Also both countries’ fights for independence are quite similar. Analysing this postcolonial discourse, part of the photo series I dedicated to the subject of Famine, the crucial role of potato culture in Ireland, and the sad remembrance of the Law of spikelets in Ukraine.

Besides that I did weave in the project a few core messages from the American philosopher Gertrude Stein* and the Irish writer James Joyce** within the haiku and visual photographic narrative. Also, the concept of the Golden Age, the theory of primordial soup, and Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes became material for inspiration.

The final project has the intimate form of the photo album, which is filled with photographs and hand-written haiku to each of the images.

Implemented within Dereenacappera artist residency in County Cork, Ireland

* “Forget grammar and think about potatoes” and “Rose is a rose is a rose...” (1913)
** about the red and white roses, regarding possibility of everything in imagination and limits of the material world from James Joyce’s novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916)