



1 / 15 Chevron Chevron Luigi Bertolini; Udine, Italy. “I found work as a mechanic in a nearby village. Two Germans ran the shop. One specialized in engines, and the other was a general smith. Three others worked for them. They were very kind to me, and very keen on teaching me. I helped German soldiers repair their trucks and tanks. I also worked on the airfield. I am still thankful to them for setting the foundation for my future career. I was interested in the work, not the politics. The Germans were here and we had to live with it. Many people understood that fighting them wasn’t worth it.”

In 2010, while visiting Russia for an exhibition of his work, the photographer Sasha Maslov took the first portrait for what became his current project, “Veterans.” The portrait is of Piotr Dmitrievych Koshkin, a Red Army plane mechanic who served in the Second World War. Inspired, Maslov began a four-year project photographing and interviewing people who lived through the war. His subjects include not only soldiers but also medics, engineers, partisans, members of various resistance movements, prisoners of war, Holocaust survivors, and civilians who suffered as a result of the conflict. All of these people, Maslov told me, were those “who experienced the war in a dramatic way, in their own skin.”

Maslov himself is a thirty-year-old Ukranian-born photographer who moved to New York five years ago. Part of what led to “Veterans” was a desire to photograph a passing generation—people near “the finish lines of their lives.” He also wanted to reflect on the differences between people’s experiences in different countries. “The geography is one of the most interesting parts of the project,” he told me. “You can visually compare where people are from and draw the lines between them. All these people I’m photographing were involved in this massive event, and, like the Big Bang, they’ve been thrown to different parts of the world. Living rooms, bedrooms, even kitchens can tell you what someone went through in their life. The quality of life is reflected in their environment—what’s on their shelf, what kind of clothing they are wearing, and what is reflected on their faces.”

Maslov has travelled to eighteen countries so far, and has plans to visit India, Australia, South Africa, and Greece before publishing the interviews and portraits as a book. I asked what surprised him most about the “veterans” he’s encountered. He said, “Every time, I am surprised by the amount of forgiveness that people gave and also the amount of animosity other people still harbor—really the two extremes.”

Interviews edited and transcribed by Michael Kazepis.