New York Photographs

My New York photographs are ready from the lab (Analogue Wonderland). I have re-fallen in love with my 35mm film camera, a Fujica STX-1. I bought it almost 30 years ago when I was doing my art foundation course, inspired by Tim Rundle, now a Principal Lecturer at Nottingham School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University, one of the most inspiring and influential individuals of my career.

For my trip I used Kodak Ultramax 400. I did some research into colour photography and particularly liked Saul Leiter, whose work I hadn’t encountered before. A lot of very flat, almost two-dimensional colour photographs that have a strong composition and layout and almost feel like paintings. I also really like Joel Meyerowitz’s work. This link is colour street photography. The quality, colour and composition are all really evocative.

I took most of my photographs on the Brooklyn Bridge. I was there on my last day, by chance it was golden hour, the light was amazing and all of the photographs, both on film and on my iPhone have a particular quality, which I’d never really understood but is what makes golden hour warm and special. I also have an almost identical photograph of Rodin’s The Thinker from Columbia University, even the focus is the same.

Brooklyn Bridge, 2025. Photo: Sara Nesteruk

 

Brooklyn Bridge, 2025. Photo: Sara Nesteruk 

Brooklyn Bridge, 2025. Photo: Sara Nesteruk

 

 ‘The Thinker’ by Rodin. Photo: Sara Nesteruk

 

A Natural History of the Studio

 

This is a current exhibition of work by William Kentridge. Kentridge’s work includes drawing, erasing, collage, film, performance, music and theatre. He was born in South Africa and grew up under apartheid. His work explores the past and its relationship to the present using tactile forms of production, raw animation techniques and the artist’s studio as a way to describe process, perception and reality. (1)

 

 Figure 1. Pocket Drawings 187–241, 2016. By William Kentridge. Photo: author. 

Figure 2. News from Nowhere (detail), 2007. By William Kentridge. Photo: author.


The exhibition is at Hauser & Wirth in two buildings at 18th Street and 22nd Street New York. A Natural History of the Studio explores printmaking in the first gallery venue and in the second a dynamic, stunning show across two floors of the gallery space. On 22nd Street the focus is a piece of working including production materials, drawing, film and sculpture.

 

Figure 3. Drawing for Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (Mine Dump), 2020. By William Kentridge. Photo: author.



Figure 4. Drawings for Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot, 2020. By William Kentridge. Photo: author.


The focus is on Kentridge’s lockdown work completed in 2024, Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot. This is an acclaimed series of nine, thirty-minute episodes shot in his studio. The work explores process and is a portrait of a particular moment in the artist’s experience and practice. It includes collage, drawing and video footage of the artist himself. As with many of Kentridge’s works the artist reveals time in a tactile, tangible way through stop-motion animation, drawing and a mix of production techniques that result in a raw, uncomplicated final outcome. The second floor of the gallery includes single screen animation work and sculpture. 

Figure 5. Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot gallery installation. By William Kentridge. Photo: author.



Figure 6. Fugitive Words, 2024. By William Kentridge. Photo: author.

1. “William Kentridge,” Hauser & Wirth, accessed 9 June, 2025, https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/william-kentridge/ 

Український музеи, Наукове Товариство ім. Шевченка і Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church

Українське мистецтво в Нью-Йорку. Я відвідала три виставки в Українському музеї в Нью-Йорку: «Селянське – Модерне» «Юрій Соловій: Абстагування Часу» і «Українська Писанка». Моєю улюбленою картиною вула «Пічка» Давпда Бурлюка.

Давид Бурлюк. Пічка, 1915.

Я також відвідала Наукове Товариство ім. Шевченка для екскурсії бібліотекою та арківами, візит організовано Razom for Ukraine.

Плакат, Наукове Товариство ім. Шевченка. Без дати.

Мій останній візит була до Української католицької церкви Святого Духа. Там я знайшола ці чудові листівки.

 

Листівки з рецептами, 1974.

Мене особливо цікавлять документи Наукового Товариства ім. Шевченка про життя українців у таборах для переміщених осіб після Другої світової війни.

Ukrainian Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Jerry Berman and William Kentridge

Thank you to Ian Gaunt and Iryna Marciuk for a digital copy of Ukrainian Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Including testimony of voices of Ukrainian women-prisoners of Ravensbrück themselves I am looking forward to reading this publication by Kalyna Bezchlibnyk Butler and published by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Development Centre (UCRDC) in Canada. The centre has a database of names of Ukrainian women, incarcerated at the camp on its website. I looked for my grandmother.



Ukrainian Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp: Voices of Prisoners (2024).

 

Database: Ukrainian Prisoners at Ravensbrück. Source: http://www.ucrdc.org/Archive-Textual_and_Photo_Records-World_War_II.html
 
An overview of the biography, work and witness testimony to the Holodomor by Jerry Berman is now on Wikipedia in Ukrainian. Thank you to Yana Hrynko and colleagues for mentioning my work and involvement in the donation of the letters from Alison Marshall to the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv in 2021.



Jerry Berman on Wikipedia (Ukrainian page). Source: https://uk.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%80%D1%96_%D0%91%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD

In preparation for my visit to Hauser & Wirth I came across this brilliant video by William Kentridge. In it Kentridge responds to a piece of work by Philip Guston from 1969, ‘The Studio’. I had forgotten how much I enjoy Kentridge’s talks and lectures. I love how analogue this is.



New York and the Original Holodomor Film

Art and film. A gallery tour and the Original Holodomor Film (1983).

Cheslea Gallery Tour

I have created a Chelsea Gallery Tour map using research from Time Out. Most of the galleries are between W 19th Street and W 27th Street. Particular highlights and personal favourites for me are the opportunity to see William Kentridge at Hauser & Wirth and Steve McQueen at Dia Chelsea.

Jurij Solovij. Source: The Ukrainian Museum.

I am also planning to visit Little Island and then walk to the Ukrainian Museum on the Lower East Side for two exhibitions. One of these is Jurij Solovij: Abstracting Time. I am particularly excited about Solovij’s graphic design work which includes book covers, his work on advertisements and wallpaper designs from the 1950s onwards.

Unearthed: The Original Holodomor Film - The Unknown Holocaust by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

In 1983, Taras Hukalo wrote and directed the first full-length documentary on the Stalin-manufactured Ukrainian famine, which killed millions. In it, you can hear from the survivors themselves.

Unearthed: The Original Holodomor Film - The Unknown Holocaust by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

In 1983, Taras Hukalo wrote and directed the first full-length documentary on the Stalin-manufactured Ukrainian famine, which killed millions. In it, you can hear from the survivors themselves.

Read on Substack

The Original Holodomor Film (1983)

I have also just watched The Original Holodomor Film – The Unknown Holocaust by Taras Hukalo for Radio Quebec. This graphic film features interviews with survivors, the oral testimony video style reminds me of Geoffrey Hartman’s descriptions from the Yale Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Expert interviews include Malcolm Muggeridge, James Mace and Marco Carynnyk whose work I read during my PhD. The term Holodomor itself doesn’t appear in the film.

Thank you to Ian Gaunt for links to the Ukrainian Museum and the film.

 

 

Memory, Testimony and the Imagination: Jerry Berman’s Letters

 Memory, Testimony and the Imagination manuscript.

I have completed work on a research paper for the forthcoming ASN Convention in New York. The side product of which is this very pleasing, part-handwritten and edited manuscript. The paper explores artistic responses to Ukrainian histories using Lawrence L. Langer’s theories of the literary imagination as a starting point. Exploring debates on memory politics and the visual arts I focus on witness testimony from the Holodomor in the Jerry Berman collection.

I am exploring the role of the artist and the act of witness. Using Geoffrey Hartman’s ideas on “recovered memory,” I argue for the re-embodiment of history using visual arts – data visualization and testimony.

I draw upon a range of techniques from the digital humanities, centring on work by Johanna Drucker and Lev Manovich for theoretical context. The results are a set of work in progress visuals and prototypes, using Drucker’s ideas on the “book” of the future as a guide for interface design.

The final project is due to launch in summer 2026.

A Woman in Berlin

I have lent my copy of this book – A Woman in Berlin, by an anonymous author (2011) to a friend so I have no drawing of it. I found the work after reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, I am interested in testimony, and how it survives. The book documents the author’s experiences in Berlin at the end of the Second World War, when Russian occupying forces took the city. It is brutal and essential, almost impossible to read in parts.



The author describes her experiences in an almost ‘ordinary’ way. Factual, pragmatic and removed, with distance. Originally published as anonymous in authorship, early responses were disbelieving or worse. People questioned the authenticity of the writing, which is also true of Anne Frank’s work. After the author’s death in 2001 people discovered her identity and this was confirmed by an editor in Germany in 2003.



The book tackles difficulties of survival in Berlin at the time over three months in 1945. It includes physical destruction, a city in ruins, rape on a mass scale, shortages of food and basic survival strategies. In particular from the perspective of German women. As a piece of testimony it is vital and urgent. I am attempting to share my experiences of this work as much as possible (hence lending it to a friend) so will be interested to hear from anybody who has read it.