Serafima & Jevhen

Serafima and Jevhen, a couple who shared their lives together for 65 years until Jevhen passed away. Jevhen’s dementia, Serafima’s care, and the quiet shadow of war reveal how love, patience, and humanity sustain life even through pain.

Ukraine, Horishni Plavni, 2018 – 2026

This series tells the story of Serafima and Jevhen. They shared their lives together for 65 years until Jevhen passed away. For Serafima, life goes on, and Jevhen’s absence is unmistakable.

Eight years document not only a period of life but the relentless movement between closeness and absence, between memory and forgetting. They show the rhythm of their daily routines, the quiet endurance, and the small changes. It becomes clear that life consists of a balance between joy and pain, with moments of happiness and instances of loss.

Jevhen suffered from dementia, gradually losing his orientation, his language, and his identity. Serafima held together the fragile structure of their daily life. Her life was marked by love and care, by pain and the weight of responsibility. Each day demanded dedication, patience, and the strength to continue despite exhaustion.

When Jevhen died, the apartment remained, the memories remained, and yet everything changed. Serafima remained. She continues to live, between loneliness and duty, between stillness and new routines that may one day provide support again.

Over all of this lies the invisible shadow of war, echoing like a constant background noise throughout the couple’s life. In the ongoing presence of danger and uncertainty, everyday actions gain even greater significance. Born in 1933/34, they experienced the Second World War as children, and now the tragic historical bracket closes with a new war.

The series “Serafima & Jevhen” shows that experiences of love, loss, care, aging, and enduring pain can affect everyone. It tells of the fragility of existence and the necessity of preserving humanity, even when life brings suffering.

This series is also my personal story. Serafima and Jevhen are my grandparents. They were and remain for me a home and a place of refuge. The love they gave each other, they also gave to me. It is what has stayed with me – the foundation that remains, no matter what comes.

This photo project also includes an installation that presents a poetic film:

https://youtu.be/ST2TRAg_i98

POEM:

SERAFIMA & JEVHEN
Horishni Plavni, Ukraine | 2018–2026

He looks around his apartment – everything feels strange.
With him is Serafima. He asks her who she is.
She answers gently: I am your wife.
Such a beautiful woman is mine? – she laughs.
This place is full of slowness and patience.

The tube monitor drowns out the sound of the bomb alarm.
This home offers protection
in a world without permanence.
But sometimes they count the walls,
to be behind the second one if there’s an explosion.

The war is no longer foreign.
For 89 years he tried to forget it –
the little house in Donbas,
the Nazi, his crying mother.
As if war were the bracket of his life.

The walls of their apartment have long become an archive,
covered with carpets and photographs.
They remind Serafima of times.
They remind Jevhen of the names of his children.

Serafima cares for Jevhen – she cooks, she cleans,
she washes the laundry, she goes shopping.
She takes him to the doctor, she puts him to bed.
She is 90, and her husband – ill with dementia.

Jevhen endures the pain,
endures the absence: of moments,
of memories, of feelings, of joy.
There is nothing left to hold on to.

Jevhen dies peacefully, in his bed.
Serafima holds his hand.
He stops breathing; she lays a wool blanket over him.
He should not be cold.

Will it ever get easier?
Serafima carries the unending pain.
Did love bring it along?
How do you learn to endure this life?

Serafima learns and endures.
She endures Jevhen’s absence,
the absence of joy,
the absence of closeness,
the absence of a familiar life.

Hello, my dear, she says at the cemetery,
as if he could answer.

Must one pay for love with pain?