Iryna Klachek

BIO

Iryna Klachek (b. 1990, Druzhkivka, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian documentary photographer and visual storyteller based in Kyiv. She holds a Master’s degree in Pharmacy from the National University of Pharmacy, 2013. 

Alongside her artistic practice, Klachek has a background in editorial leadership and media production. She has led multidisciplinary teams, conceived and produced documentary expeditions, and developed complex media, immersive, and exhibition projects from concept to realization. Her work in journalism has focused on political and social issues, human rights, and the consequences of war. This experience informs her approach to research, storytelling, and working with complex and sensitive subjects.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a Ukrainian photographer with a background in journalism, currently developing my practice in sports and documentary photography. My work is shaped by an ongoing interest in how people, environments, and systems interact under conditions of change, instability, and uncertainty. Having worked in media for several years, I initially approached photography as a tool to support storytelling. Over time, however, I became increasingly interested in its ability to operate independently — not only to illustrate reality, but to question, observe and hold complexity in ways that are not always possible through text.
Living and working in Ukraine during the war has profoundly influenced my perspective. I have witnessed how everyday life continues under unstable conditions, and how people adapt to long-term uncertainty. This experience has drawn my attention to subtle, often overlooked aspects of reality — quiet routines, shifts in atmosphere and the ways in which larger events become embedded in personal and physical experience.
At the core of my practice is an interest in adaptation — how individuals and communities respond to disrupted environments. This manifests in different but interconnected themes. One of these is the body, particularly through running, which I see not only as physical movement, but as a way of coping, processing and maintaining a sense of stability. I am interested in how this embodied experience can be translated into visual form.
Another important direction in my thinking relates to collective structures and environments. I am curious about how communities are formed and sustained — for example, through sports clubs — and how these structures function in different cultural contexts. At the same time, I am concerned with the fragility of natural environments, particularly in the Ukrainian Carpathians, where ecological damage caused by human activity raises urgent questions about responsibility, preservation and loss. While these themes may appear distinct, they are connected through a shared focus on the relationship between people and their surroundings — both physical and social — and on the tensions that arise when these relationships are disrupted. At this stage, I am working towards developing a more coherent visual language that allows me to explore these questions in depth. I am particularly interested in documentary approaches that leave space for ambiguity and reflection while resisting simplified or one-dimensional narratives. I see my practice as evolving, shaped by both experience and ongoing inquiry, and I approach photography as a way to better understand the complexity of the realities I am part of.

IN RESIDENCE

During the residency, I began developing In Search of Steady Ground, a photographic project exploring how people experience and adapt to different environments, particularly when moving between conditions of instability and relative safety and continuity.
Coming from Ukraine, where everyday life has been profoundly shaped by the ongoing war, I was interested in how strongly our perception of reality depends on context. What feels ordinary in one environment can become unfamiliar in another. Rather than approaching this as a direct contrast between places, I became interested in the subtle ways these transitions are experienced through the body, movement, routines, and relationships with the surrounding environment.
Running became the central point of departure. As a personal practice, it has been a way for me to process experience, regain a sense of control, and remain connected to my surroundings. During the residency, I explored how this embodied experience changes across different environments, combining my own movement through each place with observations of local running communities.
The project gradually moved beyond the question of how we adapt to unfamiliar environments. Through the residency and my return to Ukraine, I became more interested in a broader and more personal question: what does it mean to keep moving when the environment itself remains unstable? The experience of war, alongside the physical and psychological demands of running, brought the ideas of endurance, pain, adaptation, and persistence into sharper focus.
This shift led to Pain Cave, an ongoing project that continues the inquiry begun during the residency. If In Search of Steady Ground was concerned with finding stability within changing environments, Pain Cave examines what happens when stability cannot be taken for granted — and how the body, movement, and human connection can become ways of continuing despite disruption.
The residency therefore became not only a period of producing images, but a stage in the development of my artistic language. Moving between Estonia, Finland, and Germany, working with different environments and communities, and exchanging ideas with other artists helped me move from documenting an experience towards constructing a more personal and layered visual narrative.