Volyn in photographs

This is a second book of the two-volume edition dedicated to the cultural heritage of the Volyn region.

“I have been publishing photo albums on topics of regional ethnography for quite a long time. This year I will celebrate five years of my publishing activity. Of course, my camera mainly caught the unique sites of Rivne region. I traveled all over the region. This work turned out to be very interesting and exciting. This is how my photo albums about Rivne and Rivne region came into life,” Oleksandr KHARVAT told The Day.

Great Volyn, according to the photographer, was the next step in his work. The historic Volyn is presently the territory of six oblasts: Rivne, Volyn, partially Lviv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytsky, and Ternopil oblasts. It took an enormous amount of work. As a result there was a major photo research. The best works of the photo expedition that lasted for several years were published in two photo albums 150 Churches of Great Volyn and Along the Roads of Great Volyn.

“Last fall I presented the first book 150 Churches of Great Volyn. This album features over 150 movable monuments of cultural heritage from the territory of Great Volyn which are now kept in museums’ expositions, storerooms, churches, and private collections,” said Kharvat. “The launch of the second album Along the Roads of Great Volyn will soon take place in Vernadsky Library. In this album the readers will find 250 photographs of the most famous monuments of architecture and picturesque places of Volyn nature.”

Apart from the already mentioned books, the exposition that will in Vernadsky Library will include 50 photographs illustrating some stories from the albums, as well as other books by Kharvat.

According to the photographer, a huge problem is that many historical and cultural monuments have been destroyed and still more are being destroyed nowadays due to the lack of proper care from the state. “People are not indifferent to the history of their native land and are willing to work to preserve it, but there is always the question of money. While historians can preserve the movable historical values in their storerooms, they do not have enough money to take care of the immovable ones like castles, fortresses, or churches,” said Kharvat. He hopes that with the presentation of his photo albums he will be able to draw public attention to this problem. In any case, this is a systemic collection of cultural and architectural artifacts of the Great Volyn reproduced on visual media. However, it would be sad if our descendants only inherited a virtual image of their history.