Oleksandr Rupeta: Art + History Competition Second Place Winner
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. An exhausted soldier rests on the ground during intensive pre-combat training, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
We would like to thank everyone who submitted to the inaugural Lenscratch Art + History Competition. We were impressed by the enormous number of compelling bodies of work, making it challenging to select just five outstanding projects. History and Art have been deeply intertwined for centuries. The winning projects we are featuring this week had a clear connection to history—exploring this relationship from personal, familial, and community viewpoints, extending to the history of places and countries, and even delving into mysteries and myths. Each image kept us wanting to discover more about the past, how it impacts the present, and—ultimately—the future.
Jeanine Michna-Bales and Sandy Sugawara
Ukrainian documentary photographer Oleksandr Rupeta has spent much of his time photographing social anthropology and social conflicts around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, he has focused on the war there. In “Stages of Air,” he captures the dissonance between the peaceful landscapes of Donbas with the horrors of combat.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. The front line, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
What drew you to the topic of your Art + History body of work?
Being near the Ukrainian front line gives the sense of witnessing a pivotal moment in history. Russia, through both its unprovoked aggression and the “annexation” of occupied territories, disregards the established principles of international law—an act with consequences that extend far beyond the conflict between the two warring nations. This series is an attempt to convey the moment.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. Portrait of a paratrooper awarded the Golden Cross for bravery, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
What impact, if any, do you think this project has had or will have?
I dream of peace for Ukraine. And I believe that art can help—if not in solving problems, then in reminding us why they are worth solving.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. Abandoned trenches, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. Soldiers participate in physical and psychological endurance tests near the front line, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. Firing range, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
Artist Statement
The Donbas landscape near the front line radiates tranquility. It would be easy to succumb to its lulling beauty—if not for the constant echoes of aerial bomb explosions, drone strikes, and artillery fire. Sometimes, the blasts are so close you can feel the ground shake; other times, you hear the whistle of a ricocheting bullet nearby.
Occasionally, the scenery is marred by the scar of a trench or the remains of an abandoned firing range. Yet, it still beckons with an illusion of peace, as if the war is not quite here but somewhere just beyond the horizon—a few miles ahead. War cannot exist here, now. It is absurd, something unnatural in the modern world, in human nature. A few miles away, perhaps, there is another dimension, a gateway to something impossible, immeasurable. Did this really happen? Is it happening now?
In its fourth year, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine remains as brutal and uncertain as ever. Facing shortages of ammunition and personnel, along with mounting casualties, exhausted Ukrainian troops are forced to retreat under relentless enemy pressure.
Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 2025
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. Medical aid post on the front line, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. A search team collects the remains of unidentified soldiers after combat, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
Oleksandr Rupeta is a Ukrainian photographer working worldwide. He carries out short and long-term projects about political, cultural, and social life in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. His works highlight the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Afghan Red Crescent Society, the life of the Iranian Jewish community, the Sufi Community in Northern Cyprus, people with disabilities in Southern African countries, ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan, the communist legacy in the Balkans, the LGBT community in China, and more. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Oleksandr has focused on documenting the situation within the country.
Instagram: @oleksandrrupeta
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. A dog stands in front of a mine dump, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
©Oleksandr Rupeta, from the series “Stages of Air,” 2025. View from Mount Karachun, where the Russo-Ukrainian War began. In 2014, it was the site of battles between Ukrainian defenders and pro-Russian armed groups, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.
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![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](https://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
