The buttery fragrance of homemade varenyky and the sweet scent of berry kompot drinks — both traditional Ukrainian recipes — blended together Thursday evening in a room with chattering students who gathered for guest speaker Natasha Rudenko, secretary of Ukrainian Culture Center Los Angeles, who also doubled as the event’s chef. 

“Grassroots Ukraine: How Nonprofits Are Filling in the Gaps” was co-hosted by Dornsife Center for the Political Future, Society of Public Diplomats, and Visions and Voices. The event shared and explained the devastation of the Russia-Ukraine war impacting Sadove, a village in Ukraine, with a gallery of images. Rudenko spoke about their work as both an activist and an artist.

Before the war, Rudenko worked as a fine arts photographer and photography instructor. But once the war began, Rudenko decided they wanted to use their art form to make an impact. 

“I decided that I want to use my photography to document what’s happening, and not only to document what’s happening, but also for me to process because for me, that’s the way I process reality,” Rudenko said. 

On June 6, 2023, Russia allegedly blew up the Kakhovka Dam, located in the southern province of Kherson Oblast, in the early hours of the morning. This dam’s destruction caused flooding along the entire lower Dnieper River, including in the small town of Sadove, which had a population of 1,500 before the war started, according to Rudenko. 

By the time Rudenko visited Sadove in June 2023, the population had dropped to 600, they said. 

When Rudenko returned to Ukraine for their second trip a year later, the village was left with 35 people, they said. Having lost most access to transportation in and out of the village, no volunteers were willing to take Rudenko into the village until they reached out to one of the few locals who had remained. Walking through the village, Rudenko said they captured the changes after more than two years of conflict. 

“I combined the images that I made during the flood there and that I made then a year later, in 2024,” Rudenko said. “I really wanted to focus on the continuity of the story of this little place as an example of hundreds and thousands of little places and little villages, the little settlements along the front lines, from south to north, along the eastern front lines.” 

These images, Rudenko said, are crucial to creating narratives. Yet, they said there is a certain tension between photography’s dual role as art and as a historical document. 

“It was a very bizarre feeling of creating something beautiful out of a disaster,” Rudenko said. “Can we even talk in terms of aesthetics and beauty in relation to war photography? Can an image of a destroyed house be beautiful? Because it has a nice symmetry, and the water halves it in a beautiful and aesthetic way.”

There is a public expectation of war photography to be high-contrast and to contain certain tropes, Rudenko said. They believe that documentary photographers need to develop a new language of photography. 

“How many images of a toy on rubble have we seen through the years? They lose meaning because we’ve seen the toy on rubble from every conflict and every disaster,” Rudenko said. “There’s no difference between the toy on the rubble from Ukraine or Gaza or an earthquake elsewhere.” 

Rodenko said the public as viewers should be open to a different visual language that is more appropriate to the wars of today. In addition to advocacy through photography, Rudenko is also the CEO of Post Angeles, a nonprofit organization in L.A. that delivers humanitarian aid to Ukraine. 

Alice Zhang, a graduate student studying communication data science, attended the event because she said she was interested in political discussions. 

“I learned a lot of things about Eastern Ukraine and the photographer and their story behind them,” Zhang said. “[There’s] really philosophical questions in that, and I think it is really meaningful to document some stories about common people’s lives and about the more authentic theories behind the scenes and pictures we see from the newspaper.” 

Kami Akhavan, the managing director of the Center for the Political Future, encouraged students to attend events of this nature in any way they can. 

“I hope it compels people to think when you’re gathering information, to develop a perspective, think broadly, take in multiple sources of information, triangulate before you form an opinion and make sure that it is being informed by a rich breadth of sources, rather than a single source,” Akhavan said. 

Every time a person holds a camera in their hands, especially in war, Rodenko said it becomes an ethical question between one’s own biases and morality. 

“[The] camera is a really powerful tool. As a cliché [says], ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’” Rodenko said. “Every time you make an image, you ask yourself, ‘Why and how?’ Or ‘Am I doing it right? What is right in this situation?’”