Film Photographer Captures the Ennui of His Hometown
Taras Bychko grew up in the city of Lviv, Ukraine, in an area he describes as “sleepy.” He began photographing residents there — their rhythms, daily actions, and silent gestures.
“I simply started photographing what I saw every day: passersby, moments of movement and stillness, ordinary scenes that form the fabric of everyday life,” Bychko tells PetaPixel.
The Leica Gallery in London, where Bychko is holding his Erased Time exhibition, describes his photographic style as “somewhere between documentary and fine art images, being represented through both black and white and color film.”
“I believe that an artist should work from within — from the reality they are physically and emotionally present in,” Bychko says. “Where they live. Where everything is familiar, yet slightly different every day.”
The photographer says that the exhibition is a way of returning to his roots while “at the same time, to see the familiar from a new, deeper distance.” Erased Time brings together two of Bychko’s projects: Sykhiv and Out of Time. Sykhiv is the neighborhood he grew up in.
“In Sykhiv, I worked with my home neighborhood, capturing not just the environment but the echoes of childhood perceptions of time. I tried to find, within contemporary situations and landscapes – in gestures, pauses — something that still lives in memory, but hasn’t yet disappeared from reality,” he explains.
“While working on that series, I began noticing similar ‘suspended’ states beyond Sykhiv as well. That led to Out of Time — a project about spaces where Soviet aesthetics still linger, though not always visibly.”
After Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bychko and his family were forced to leave their homeland. An experience he says has changed him deeply.
“Since then, I’ve been working with the themes of losing home, identity, and the rupture with once-familiar spaces. But at the same time, with the theme of searching for a new sense of presence, trying to feel part of a world that suddenly became different,” he says.
“Photography became a way of maintaining connection — with myself, with the past, with those who stayed behind, and with those around me in this new reality.
Bychko uses a Leica M6 TTL for its “rhythm and focus” that film photographers require.
“It slows you down, sharpens your attention, makes you fully present in the moment. Each frame is a choice, a decision, a responsibility,” he says.
“What I particularly appreciate about working with the M6 is the precision that comes with a rangefinder camera — its reliability, the feeling that it becomes an extension of your hand. One of the self-imposed rules during shooting was not to crop afterward — only the scene, the camera, and the eye. Whatever enters the frame has to be right from the start.”
Taras Bychko Erased Time exhibition is on at the Leica Gallery in London, U.K, from July 19 to September 18, 2025.
Image credits: Photographs by Taras Bychko
