Dima Gavrysh

Inshallah

January 2015

In his series, Inshallah, which means “God-willing” in Arabic, photographer Dima Gavrysh explores the repercussions of the Soviet and American occupations of Afghanistan. The raw black-and-white images that make up this body of work were all captured using a cell phone while the photographer was embedded in the US army. However, the resulting prints also emit a haunting, dream-like quality that highlights the contradictions inherent to war, a condition often suffused with an idealized patriotism that frequently belies the real violence and devastation faced by the civilians and soldiers on the ground.

“I create a dark fairytale filled with my fears and dreams, based on my fascination with the army’s strength and order, set on the front lines of what has become America’s longest running war in history. Mesmerized by the complexity of the Afghan chaos, I strive to better comprehend my personal relationship to these wars: two empires, two mentalities, same battlefield, twelve years apart.”

Dima Gavrysh is a documentary and fine art photographer currently based in Portland, Oregon. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 after studying photography and motion imagery in Kiev, Ukraine. For the past 13 years, Gavrysh has worked as a documentary photographer with major publications and news agencies such as Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and Agence France-Presse. He has also worked on multiple projects around the globe, including collaborations with Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations Population Fund, and numerous recent embeds with the US Army in Afghanistan. His work has appeared in a variety of international publications, including The New York Times, Stern, Paris Match, and Time.