Denys Kryvyi: Fighting for His Landscape

"Nature revealed its secrets to him," said Halyna Volhina, the wife of the naturalist photographer Denys Kryvyi, at the opening of the posthumous charity exhibition of his works in Zhytomyr in early October 2023.

Denys was committed to cultivating such trusting relationships with nature.

"The profession itself demands tremendous patience and physical endurance. Often, you have to work in challenging natural and weather conditions," he once shared about his profession in a video for his daughter Solomiia's kindergarten. "But the sense of euphoria that arises during a face-to-face encounter with nature overrides any difficulties."

Denys would rise at four in the morning to witness the sunrise at the Buzkyi Hard Nature Reserve, to construct elaborate rafts for observing herons in the marshes of the Southern Buh. Herons froze in ceremonial poses before his lens, as if performing a galliard, dancing in the morning mist. Denys would lift his drone above the Protich Tract in Mykolaiv Oblast and capture Konvalii Island from a consistent perspective, surgically replicating the composition of previous shots throughout changing seasons. From above, Konvalii Island resembled a heart. Only in winter, when the island was embraced by white ice and outlined by darkened water, was it visible that a piece had broken off from its heart.

"He was prepared for any challenge in pursuit of a noble cause," noted Halyna about Denys’s photography and his service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A versatile naturalist photographer who adeptly captured the Chumak Trail, bird hunting, storms over the river, and dawn in the Carpathians: from the moment of the full-scale invasion, he prepared for military service, joined the Special Operations Forces in the summer of 2022, and in May 2023, he perished in battle near Bakhmut while rescuing a wounded comrade.

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After the exhibition opening, Halyna transformed from the vernissage image of Jackie Kennedy–short white jacket, striped black dress, heels–into a lively, energetic, practical young woman. She traversed half the country in a car loaded with photos taken by her late husband. Behind the wheel, she shared her memories:

"At some point, I got into gardening and asked Denys to load a few stones into the car. He did it all, but he was very nervous. He took me out of the car, pointed to it, and said, "Look, it says ‘Kia’ on there, not ‘tractor’!" Now, every time the car is packed to the brim with his works, I remember this and laugh."

Halyna recounted how their relationship developed in tandem with Denys’s passion for photography, how they eagerly awaited their daughters Solomiia and Melissa, and how Denys joined the military. She recalled that the initial assignments were the toughest for him: "The guys would enter the village, take positions, hide in basements to spend the night. Artillery worked all night. In the morning, they would emerge from the basement, asking themselves, ‘Where's the village?’ Only to discover that everything around them had practically been leveled to the ground."

Despite the fact that Special Operations Forces personnel undergo four to six months of training, there are aspects of war one can simply never be ready for.

"He was an absolutely peaceful person — and caring," shared Denys’s friend Anatolii Bilyanets, director of the advertising agency where he worked after college. "Choosing to serve was probably driven by the fact that he was physically close to the front."

In February 2022, when Russian forces approached Pervomaisk, Denys took Halyna and the children to the village of Rakhny in Vinnytsia Oblast. Within three days, he returned to Mykolaiv Oblast and approached the military enlistment office to have a draft notice issued. However, during the initial months after the full-scale invasion, there was no shortage of volunteers.

While waiting for the call from the military enlistment office, Denys bought combat boots and started running in them and swimming in the river. Friends, aware that Halyna was constantly occupied with their two little daughters, would share stories about his athletic endeavors. Ultimately, Denys’s physical fitness and endurance allowed him to successfully pass the selection process for the Special Operations Forces unit.

"I understood that enlisting was a patriotic impulse. But he was a classic man of the humanities!" laughed Halyna. "When he entered the assembly shop, they would ask him to keep his hands in his pockets because he could accidentally nail his fingers or cut himself with a knife on the table. However, in the army, everything worked out for him, and he was proud of it."

"His comrades faced all kinds of challenges on the front line and behind enemy lines and came out alive everywhere. He used to say that the Special Operations Forces were immortal guys, robots made of steel, knights in shining armor," recalled Anatolii.

Denys became one of those knights in shining armor. In his military service and in his landscape photography, you could easily trace a common theme: a love for life in all its diversity and a desire to protect it.

"You can mourn his death, or you can be proud of his life. I chose the latter," said Halyna. "He lived a bright life, did what he wanted, and took pride in it. He made his choice, and I make mine. I choose to move forward and share his legacy."

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"Denys’s photos were created at a very high technical level," commented photographer Oleksandr Nesterovskyi, who is currently also involved in Ukraine’s defense. The variety of techniques mastered by Kryvyi was impressive. "He used telephoto lenses in wildlife shots, allowing him to highlight specific visual accents. Or he worked with a long exposure at maximum matrix sensitivity to achieve a fairytale effect," added Oleksandr, pointing out the example of the photo "Magic of Stars." In the frame, Denys captured the shimmering lurex of the starry sky, with a tranquil river mirroring underneath.

Denys’s technical skill and vision were twice recognized with the prestigious blue ribbon from the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP). His Carpathian photo "In the Mist" received an award in 2012, while the work "Sunrise on the Southern Buh" was recognized as the best among four thousand contenders in 2015. His photos from 2013 onwards illustrated special issues of National Geographic Ukraine and guides for Buzkyi Hard National Park. For him, photography was not just a calling but also a tool. As he confessed, the goal was "to showcase these places that are worth the world’s admiration, to preserve them not only in photos."

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Denys Kryvyi's self-portraits in landscapes, created through aerial photography, echoe a conversation with the Flemish tradition of the "world landscape." This imagined landscape of the 16th century, seen from the air, not only compiles the spectacular components of the European landscape—cliffs and rivers, lakes, forests, and plains—but also embeds man and society into this fantastical panorama. The traditional hierarchy between the subject of the depiction and the natural background disappears. Think of "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by Bruegel, where idyllic domestic scenes and an equally idyllic wide-format landscape overshadow the mythical tragedy: "A boy falling out of the sky" as W.H. Auden wrote in the poem dedicated to the painting, " the sun shone as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water."

In Kryvyi's self-portraits, there’s no need to search for the human element in the lower right corner of the image: the photographer would center the frame on the human figure but use it more as a unit of measurement for scale. His figure does not get lost in the landscape but rather accentuates its grandeur. The landscapes of Buzkyi Hard may seem like fantastical compilations, akin to Flemish "world landscapes," but they are not. The photographer lies beneath the sky on a rocky slope overlooking an emerald lake formed in the place of an abandoned kaolin clay quarry near the village of Myhiya. The camera hangs too high to discern his face, but he is unmistakably gazing at the sky, meeting the gaze of eternity. Meeting our gaze. Seeing the world landscape through Denys Kryvyi’s eyes, we take responsibility for preserving it

In the summer of 2023, Halyna Volhina founded the SYAO charitable foundation which conducts auctions of photo works by Denys Kryvyi. The funds raised are used to support his unit

Denys Kryvyi was born on October 19, 1988, in Cherniakhiv, Zhytomyr Oblast. He studied history in his mother’s home region, at the Pervomaisky Institute of Mechnikov National University. The couple married in 2011 and had two daughters: Solomiia in 2018 and Melissa in 2020. After completing university, Denys Kryvyi worked as a designer at an advertising agency in Zhytomyr, and from 2013, he began working with National Geographic Ukraine. He was the winner of national and international photography contests, including two FIAP Blue Ribbons. He joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the summer of 2022. On May 11, 2023, he was killed in action in Bakhmut.