The Museum of Folk Architecture and Life (33a Kapitulna St, Uzhhorod)

Dates: May 22 – June 16, 2026

Opening hours: daily, 10:00 – 18:00

Opening: May 22 at 13:00

The photo project by Professor Eugeny Kotlyar of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts presents a collection of artistic photographs captured by the author between 2002 and 2024 during his numerous journeys through the former Jewish towns of Ukraine.

The project reveals the ancient and semi-ruined world of Jewish shtetls (Yiddish term for small towns), which were closely connected with the centuries-long history of Jewish life in Ukraine before the Holocaust. In this exhibition, Eugeny Kotlyar explores the meaning of the sites formerly thriving with Jewish life. He seeks to capture the feeling of the still-vanishing world of the shtetl through the stylisation of photographs in black-and-white and poetic montages that mix history, memory, nostalgia, and a reality now unfolding.

All of the works are organised into six thematic cycles: “The Shtetl’s Chambers“, “Silence. Panoramas of Yiddishland“, “The Aesthetics of Desolation“, “Asymmetry of Time“, “Faces of Localities“, and “Shtetl. Transgression“.

These cycles offer different perspectives on the perception and representation of the shtetl image. The author views the Jewish town as a phantom continent lost in time, yet still continuing its existence. Filled with both love and sorrow, Eugeny Kotlyar’s photographs reveal the beauty and resilience of this still-living world. 

The photographs, created over many years, have been exhibited in Ukraine and Israel since 2005. In the summer of 2024, during the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, a large-scale exhibition was held in New York at the initiative of the Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham University. In the same year, the exhibition was presented at the Beit Dan Jewish Cultural Centre in Kharkiv, where it marked the centre’s 25th anniversary and began its travelling journey across Ukraine. It then moved to the Halom Jewish Community Centre in Kyiv before arriving in Uzhhorod.

Video of the previous exhibition at Halom Jewish Community Centre (Kyiv)

Video recording of the presentation lecture (in English)

The project was implemented with the financial support of the Beit Dan Jewish Cultural Centre(Kharkiv), with the assistance from the Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham University (New York), Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, the Eastern Regional Scientific and Art Centre of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies.