"When it all started, it was terrifying
."
As soon as the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops began, Sergey Maximishin, a photojournalist - who has twice won the World Press and collaborated with the biggest international press titles - took refuge in Israel with his partner.
In an apartment in Jerusalem, far from the bombardments that Ukraine is now suffering, the Israeli daily
Haaretz
met the journalist who has long captured the war.
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Accustomed to photographing the Russian people in all its complexity for several years, Sergey Maximishin chose not to document this conflict, for fear of becoming an instrument of it.
“
It was immediately clear that we had to leave and that we were not ready to pay all this with our taxes, and with our presence in Russia”
.
If he assures that the propaganda is equally strong on both sides, he emphasizes that we must remember who is the aggressor in what he describes as a
“colonial war”
.
The journalist, who notably photographed Vladimir Putin to illustrate
Newsweek
's 2002 article entitled "The Dark Side of Russia"
,
also admits having received threats on Facebook following some of his publications on the social network.
The latter would have finished convincing him to leave Russia.
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“I would never travel for a war again”
This decision is part of a longer process for Sergey.
The 57-year-old, who covered the conflict in Afghanistan in 2001, and the few months leading up to the war in Iraq in 2002 for
Newsweek
magazine , no longer wants to document the war.
“I will never travel for a war again and there are many moral reasons for that”.
He explains to
Haaretz
that he has given up traveling to photograph a war since the Beslan hostage-taking by Chechen separatists in 2004, which left 334 victims, including 186 children.
“In Beslan, I felt like everything was done for us to come and take pictures;
mass terror was born from the mass media”
, continues Sergey Maximishin.
“When CNN arrives, the war has started, and when CNN leaves, the war is over,
” he explains.
I realized that I didn't want to be part of this unacceptable set."
Born in 1964 in the USSR near Odessa, to a Ukrainian mother and a Jewish father, Sergey Maximishin grew up in the city of Kerch, in Crimea.
At the age of 14, his mother gave him his first camera.
In 1982, he joined Leningrad to pursue studies in physics before encountering photography again when he joined the Soviet army in 1987, during a campaign in Cuba.
Back in Russia, he lived and taught photography in St. Petersburg for many years before fleeing to Israel at the start of Putin's troops invading Ukraine three months ago.
The photographer, considered one of the greatest in Russia, has notably been rewarded twice at World Press Photo, the first time in 2004 and then in 2006 in the "Daily life" category for a photo of guards taken at the border. between the two Koreas.
Sergey Maximishin, who works with the Focus agency, has collaborated on several occasions with internationally renowned titles such as the
New York Times, Liberation,
the
Washington Post
and the
Wall Street Journal.
While the war in Ukraine has already been going on for more than three months, Sergey Maximishin explains today that he wants to settle permanently in Israel to create a photography school there, and thus continue to teach.