Elena Subach (b. 1980) is a Ukrainian photographer whose work explores the spaces where beauty and suffering coexist. Born in the coal-mining town of Chervonohrad and now based in Lviv, Subach’s path to photography seems unlikely. She received a Master’s degree in economics from Volyn State University, then spent many years outside of the art world entirely. Her road to becoming an artist was unconventional, which may be precisely why her practice feels so original.
For Ukrainian artists today, the subject of war often presents itself as inevitable. Subach’s distinction in conveying a nation at war lies not in her subjects but in her approach. Before the start of the Russian-Ukraine war, her photographs were known for their humour and bold, saturated colours. Subach’s surreal collages from the series Grandmothers (2018) whimsically depict the habits and beliefs of older women in western Ukraine, exaggerating details and accentuating them with a flash.
Forming a visual language
Wielding handbags and helmeted in colourful headscarves, these women convey both reliability and strength. The women, known as “babusi”, carry family photographs alongside the faces of Jesus and Mary. They live with post-war values, save bread for a future that may never arrive, clip newspaper articles about miraculous healings, and tell each other that life after death is real. “I do not want to mistrust them at all, I only want to hug them and say that there is nothing to be afraid of, and they are absolutely right”, she states.
Hidden (2022), Subach’s first series created after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, represents a departure from her previous style. “Now I think that my mission is to record this time in the history of my country”, she tells See-Zeen. In Hidden, she chronicled efforts to save architectural and artistic objects in Lviv from the war. The “invisible” is often the scene of trauma. The project documented improvised attempts to protect artworks in Lviv: sculptures wrapped in foam, museum objects sealed behind sandbags, church relics enclosed like patients in a ward.
In Chairs (2022), she depicts empty seats in a volunteer centre – absent bodies, present histories. These works emerged from an inability, at first, to photograph people directly during the invasion. To do so would risk violating private pain or turning tragedy into spectacle. The ethical question – how to look, how to witness – became the engine of her practice.
When witnessing becomes care
A different motif emerges in We Don’t Want to See This Anymore (2024), a project that captures the tension between the necessity of visual testimony and the exhaustion of viewing war images. While photography has long been essential in documenting violent conflicts, the steady flow of grim and traumatic imagery can lead to desensitisation. “It will take some time for history to absorb and reflect on it. But while the country is still in a state of war, it is important to understand and observe what happens within the country, and the world”, the artist explains in the same interview with See-Zeen.
In this series, Subach’s subjects – artists, dancers, soldiers, displaced families – are photographed with their eyes closed. Their shut eyes block the viewer’s claim to intimacy. The result is slightly unsettling. On the surface, the photographs show Ukrainians going about their daily routines in the midst of war. Yet the viewer understands that their rhythms are anything but ordinary. They have borne witness to horrors that cannot be unseen.
A year later, Subach created her most recent work, New Borders of My Body (2025), a series of photographs featuring former soldiers and civilians undergoing rehabilitation at the Superhumans Center in Lviv Oblast. Her photos do not resemble portraits in the conventional sense. The images depict people undergoing aquatic rehabilitation after amputations, their figures partially veiled and altered by the water around them. In the centre’s swimming pool, Ukrainians relearn how to move in altered bodies: arms replaced by prosthetics, limbs no longer there. Their gestures become negotiations with water. Suspended in this in-between environment, they inhabit a community where pain, memory, and healing intersect. The pool serves as both refuge and reflection – a shelter that softens contours, reshapes boundaries, and hints at the possibility of renewal.
While Subach’s subjects have changed over time, what remains consistent is her use of flash, adding texture and urgency to each story she tells. Today, she returns to an uncertain and shaky visual terrain, where everyday life and the suffering of war coexist. She does not present war as spectacle, but as surrounding – internalised, normalised, lived. The terror is not always in the blast; it is in taking the next step. According to Subach, “Despite the painful losses that the Ukrainian people experience today, life goes on”.
Her work has been shown internationally – at Photo Élysée in Lausanne, the Nordic House in Reykjavik, the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, Kunstforum Wien – and is held in major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Neues Museum in Nürnberg.
