Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Photographs from Ukraine have tended to be of catastrophes - war, oppression, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But now comes a new look at the country.

The photographs of Igor Gaidai seem, from a distance, to be black-and-white abstracts - maybe a thick, horizontal slash-of-dark against a lighter background. But on closer inspection, each one is a panoramic group photograph - a crowd of Ukrainian workers, for instance, or soldiers, or wedding guests - each picture perhaps four meters wide and a meter high.

An exhibition of Gaidai's work has just opened at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, in a project co-curated by the Sumarria-Lunn gallery and the German Kathrin Singer. The Strand presenter Harriett Gilbert went there to speak with Igor Gaidai, and to meet curator Will Lunn.