Old Khata Book

"We’re Anna Ilchenko and Svitlana Oslavska, old khata project creative collective. Anna is a documentary photographer and director. Svitlana is a journalist and documentary prose writer. The words “creative collective” describe our tandem best, since we work as an independent production and publisher at the same time. 

We work with the traces of traditional culture in modern everyday life. Folk art, folk architecture, and the way people speak about themselves inspire us. We observe changes in rural communities, create documentary texts, photo and video works, and publish books. 

We’re also sisters who were born in the city of Sieverodonetsk, currently occupied by Russia. Our family lived in different parts of Ukraine, and since early childhood and throughout our professional life we have been exploring diverse sides of Ukrainian reality. 

We created the Old Khata project in 2020, with the idea of making a photobook about rural houses. Russia’s full-scale invasion postponed this work, but in 2023 “Old Khata Book. A photo book about houses and people” was finally published.  

We enjoyed working in tandem with the topics of rural architecture and folk art — with all those glimpses of traditional culture in modern life. That’s why publishing the Old Khata Book became not the end, but the start. Our next publication will be an art book about naїve wall-paintings in Ukrainian villages at the beginning of the XX century."